


A Tale of Two Stars

by babyteresa



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, POV Cassian Andor, POV Jyn Erso, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rebelcaptain - Freeform, Recovery, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Slow Romance, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Torture, bc I am trash who feeds off angst, but also happy bits, mostly just a lot of angst, recovery from torture, space dorks in love, they survived scarif
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-02
Updated: 2017-03-18
Packaged: 2018-09-21 12:59:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 30,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9550229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babyteresa/pseuds/babyteresa
Summary: A memory flashed in her brain. The hangar on Yavin 4. Cassian leaning in towards her. So close that all she could see were his deep, brown eyes, glimmering with hope.“Welcome home,” He had told her.--Cassian Andor had been the first to ever come back for Jyn Erso.





	1. Escape

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still all shook from rogue one...and I've needed the motivation to write a fic for so long now. Time to give my beautiful space babies an ending they deserve

_“Fly the kriffing ship Cassian! Get as far away from here as you can!”_

That was what she had shouted at him. That was what she had screamed desperately as the black-clad monstrosity had pulled her away, dwarfing her as they picked up her frail frame and tossed her over their shoulder like she was a ragdoll.

Of course, one had set its sights on him as well. Jyn had already strapped him into the pilot’s seat, and run after both of their attackers single-handedly. Even though they had just been to hell and back, even though she had stared death in the face countless times already that day, she was ready to fight.

Jyn Erso, the fighter. The survivor.

And as they pulled her away, pulled her away from _him,_ there was nothing he could do. He stared helplessly as the cockpit door hissed shut and Jyn’s screams were cut short.

Without thinking, he had punched a course into the hyperdrive computer of the imperial shuttle, forgetting to first uncouple from the star destroyer which had intercepted them in the orbit of Scarif. Part of his mind registered the gut wrenching lurch, but most of it was clouded by pain and terror and Jyn.

_Where are they taking her? What would they do to her?_

But then the shuttle detached from the destroyer, launching into hyperspace. And as he saw the stars swirl around him, he began to slip away from reality. Cassian Andor’s vision faded to black and his mind blanked to nothing.

\--

_Andor_

_Andor_

“Andor!”

Slowly, Cassian opened his eyes. Bright, white light flooded in, and he felt waves of pain flow through head. Immediately after he felt a stabbing pain in his shoulder. All around him, the world was spinning.

He began to make shapes out through the blinding glare. Wild, dark curls hung above him. There was a ceiling. He was indoors. On a bed, he realised, when he became aware of the thin mattress he was lying on.

“Andor!”

The curls. He recognised the curls. He recognised the tan, olive skin, he recognised the wide grin. However, putting a name to the features was a task his barely conscious mind found difficult.

“Sh…Shara?” He groaned, attempting to sit upright. His arms failed him, giving way beneath him. With an unsophisticated _thud,_ he crashed back down onto the bed.

“Hey, hey! The captain awakes!” Shara exclaimed, laughing.

With every passing second, he became more and more aware of his surroundings. He was in a small room, with white walls and a white ceiling. There was a steady, high pitched beep coming from somewhere in the room, and he cranked his head to the side to see a monitor, with wires that he followed back to his arm. Next to the bed there was a small chair, taken by Shara. She was leaning over him, smiling.

“I’m going to call for the medic. She’ll want to know that you’re awake. And I’ll have to alert command, they’ve been waiting to get their teeth into you ever since we picked you up-” She began.

“Shara,” he said softly, cutting her off.

“Andor?”

“Where is…where is Jyn? The others…did the others…who made it back?” He murmured.

Her face fell, her broad grin wiped away in an instant.

“Cassian…” she replied gently. “Cassian, no one else made it off Scarif.”

It felt like a weight had been dropped on his chest. It wasn’t true. It _couldn’t_ be true. Those were his friends, his comrades. There was no way that they were…gone.

Suddenly he was struggling to breath, trying again to sit up. It wasn’t true. Their unauthorised mission to Scarif was dangerous, he knew that. His men had volunteered knowing full well that there was a chance they may not have made it back. But…no one? It felt impossible. There was no way that he was the _only_ survivor.

And then he remembered Jyn. They…The empire…had taken Jyn. Dragged her away screaming. Tore her away from _him._

Tears welled in his eyes, threatening to spill down his cheeks. A lump rose in his throat, as he choked back the sobs that threatened to wrack his body.

“Andor,” she said, placing a hand on his shoulder. “The medic is coming. Command will come soon. They’ll fill you in better than I can.”

Slowly, he nodded, sinking back down into the bed. He felt empty, he felt deflated. Because everything he had was gone.

There was nothing left.

The door to the small med-bay room hissed open. “Captain Andor?” Came a voice from the doorway, and he looked up.

The medic was a twi’lek woman, who looked maybe the same age as him. Sometimes it was hard to tell when it came to different species. She wore a loose fitting grey jumpsuit, the standard uniform for all medical personnel on Yavin 4.

“Lieutenant Bey signalled that you were awake,” she told him, her voice flat and tired. He assumed that she had been on shift for hours, attending to all of the rebellion’s sick and injured. “We’ve already addressed your serious injuries by placing you in the bacta tank. The blast your shoulder took is healed, but it may continue to hurt for a week or more. You may also experience continual migraines due to trauma and shock. We have medicine we can administer if this issue persists…”

Cassian drowned out the words coming from the Twi’lek’s mouth. None of them made any sense to him anyway.

Shara seemed to be absorbing the information for him, nodding every so often.

His world spun, and a high-pitched ringing replaced the medic’s words in his ears. He closed his eyes to block out the light that was again flashing before him. Faces appeared before him.

Kaytu.

Bodhi.

Chirrut.

Baze.

Melshi.

Jyn.

“Captain,” came a voice, and he opened his eyes. The medic was gone, replaced by an auburn-haired woman in a long, white robe standing over him. Behind her was a balding man with a mustard yellow military jacket.

“Senator Mothma?” He groaned. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed. He looked around, and saw that Shara was now standing at the back of the room, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed, wearing her orange flight jumpsuit.

“Dr Sholludi has cleared you for briefing, are you well enough Captain?” She asked. However, she didn’t really seem that concerned.

“I’m well enough,” Cassian replied through gritted teeth.

General Draven, his hand rubbing his receding hairline, stepped forward. He appeared to be a great deal more stressed than the senator. Of course he was. He had lost nearly his entire division.

“We detected an imperial shuttle in Yavin’s airspace. Lieutenant Bey was dispatched to intercept the craft. However, when no response was received, orders were given to destroy the shuttle, in order to preserve the secrecy of this base. Lieutenant Bey disobeyed orders, boarded the shuttle instead. Said she had a feeling about it,” He said.

“To be fair sir,” Shara interrupted, “Scans revealed only a single life form on-board, going against imperial protocol. There was obviously something amiss.”

“Anyway, Bey found you unconscious in the cockpit, severely injured. It appeared that you had pre-set the hyperspace course, and the craft was in autopilot. You were the only one to make it off Scarif.”

Slowly, Cassian shook his head. “No…Jyn was alive. The troopers…the troopers took her,” he mumbled.

“Captain Andor,” The senator began. “If Erso has been taken by the empire, she’s dead. I’m sorry.”

\--

She awoke with a gasp.

The room was dark, albeit for a single red bulb in the corner. The walls, floor and ceiling were all a deep shade of black. She looked around, her green eyes widening as they adjusted to the low light.

She was on a solid bench, lying down. On the other side of the room was a toilet and a sink, in the same shade of black, attached securely to the floor and wall. Opposite her was a door, shut flush against the floor. It looked heavy, impossible to move. Above it, the flickering red light illuminated a number on the wall. _2186._

She began to piece together the chain of events that had led her here. _Scarif. Troopers. Captured._

She had no idea where she was or how long she had been there. But she did not one thing for sure.

Jyn Erso was not dead.

  
  



	2. Contemplation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Somewhere, Jyn is imprisoned by the empire. Cassian tries to come to terms with what the rebel alliance has become post-Scarif.

The door slid open, and beam of light from outside flooded into the room. An older man, with skin that seemed to be stretched across his face far too tightly, stood at the doorway, flanked by a small squad of Stormtroopers, their white armour immaculate and shining. The man himself was dressed in a neatly pressed, olive green shirt and trousers, the uniform of imperial officers. By the amount of badges which sat proudly on his chest, Jyn assumed that he was high up, important.

“Jyn Erso. I do not believe that we have had the pleasure of meeting. My name is Grand Moff Tarkin, governor of the outer rim territories. I do think that we will get along rather well, you and I,” he said. His accent, his stance, everything about him screamed self-importance. Not the kind of person Jyn enjoyed the company of, especially when it was an imperial officer.

“Do you now?” Jyn asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm. She flashed Tarkin and his troopers a wicked grin, revelling in her own pettiness.

“I do, miss Erso. And I would love to find out more about you,” he replied, just as sarcastically, stepping in the room and walking towards her. He stopped uncomfortable close, and she could make out every fine line and wrinkle on his wizened face.

“My name is Jyn Erso,” she told him. “Daughter of Galen and Lyra Erso. And you’ve lost.” She jerked her head up, meeting his gaze with a steely stare.

“And you’ve won, have you?” Tarkin asked. “Quite an _interesting_ claim for someone in _your_ position to make my dear.” He paused. “However, not entirely untrue either. People now look up to you as a hero of the rebellion, miss Erso. Those who believe you are dead see you as a martyr. Their belief that you sacrificed yourself for the cause has caused a great many citizens of the galaxy take up arms against their empire.”

“How lovely,” Jyn replied, smiling.

“Fortunately for us, Miss Erso, you are not dead. And if you wish to remain that way, you will tell us the location of the rebel base,” He told her, returning the smile. It made her feel sick inside, as if a lump was rising from the bottom of her stomach and up to her throat.

“No.” She said, with all the confidence she could muster.

“If you refuse to give this information willingly, miss Erso, you will find that our other methods of persuasion are less… _friendly,”_ he replied, broadening his grin.

“I won’t tell you anything,” she repeated. “You may as well kill me, because I’m not talking.”

“This is quite a change of heart from you, my dear. Mere days ago you were still imprisoned for petty thievery and other low-level criminal behaviour. What made you become such a dedicated soldier in that time?” He asked, appearing genuinely curious.

A memory flashed in her brain. The hangar on Yavin 4. Cassian leaning in towards her. So close that all she could see were his deep, brown eyes, glimmering with hope.

_“Welcome home,”_ He had told her.

“Hope,” she told Tarkin. “Rebellions are built on hope.”

“I give you one last chance to answer. Where is the location of the rebel base?” He demanded.

Jyn said nothing. Instead, she moved closer to his face, and spat. The projectile, her glob of saliva, landed with a satisfying _splat_ square on the bridge of his nose.

Tarkin staggered back, disgusted. He wiped his face clean with the sleeve of his spotless uniform, dirtying it. She grinned at his expression, which looked as if he had bitten into a lemon. However, it only took him a moment to once again compose himself.

“Very well, my dear,” he said, and turned away to face his troopers. “Miss Erso has made her choice,” He told them. “Prepare the interrogation room for our guest. Make certain that an IT-O droid is present, for increased _persuasion_.”

“Yes sir,” answered the trooper, his voice distorted from beneath the white helmet.

Grand Moff Tarkin and his Stormtroopers marched out of the cell, the door hissing shut behind them.

Jyn ran after the door, smashing her fist against it and sinking down to the floor. She cried, immediately regretting her action. Her fist throbbed with pain.

“Is…is someone there?” Came a muffled voice.

Shocked, Jyn jerked around, but her cell was still empty. _I’m going crazy,_ she said to herself.

She steadied herself, listening again for the voice.

_Tap, tap, tap._

She followed the sound, realising that it was coming from the wall. She placed her hand on it, following the vibrations along the cell. It grew heavier and louder as she moved.

Then she noticed the small irregularity in the wall. A tiny grate, smaller than her hand. She assumed it was to improve air flow in the cell. _How kind of the empire,_ she thought, eliciting a small laugh from herself.

“Are you there?” Jyn asked, whispering into the grate.

“Yes, yes I’m here!” The voice replied from the other side of the grate. Jyn attempted to look through, to see the mystery voice, but the space was too small and too dark to see through.

“Do you know where I…where we are?” She asked.

Jyn knew she was in an imperial prison, that much was obvious. But where? Had they taken her back to Wobani? Or was she in another of the countless prisons the empire operated throughout the galaxy?

“You’re in the prison block. On the Death Star,” the voice told her.

The Death Star? It felt like a cruel joke.

“Who…who are you?” She asked the mystery voice.

“Leia,” it answered simply.

The name seemed familiar, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. And then she realised.

“Leia? Princess Leia of Alderaan?” she asked, and received a faint “mhmm” from the other side of the ventilation grate.

She had heard the rumours that the junior senator from Alderaan was involved with the rebel alliance, but for the Empire to arrest and imprison her based only on rumours? It was a bold move.

If the empire’s terror was growing, they were definitely becoming more and more intent on discovering the location of the alliance. And she knew that they would try everything to extract the information from her.

But she would not let them.

\--

Cassian had been cleared for active duty after only a few hours of bed rest. The time in the bacta tank had taken care of his injuries, and after Scarif the alliance was so low on personnel that they couldn’t spare one of their best operatives for even a few days.

He had been briefed again, this time in the control room. The rebels were in shambles, hastily trying to reorganise and recruit. The scientists and engineers within the alliance were attempting to formulate a plan to take out the death stat, but the plans had been captured along with the princess. There were very few options left.

He’d been given a fairly standard mission, talk to his contacts, recruit new members, gather information. Things he had done so much he could probably do it in his sleep.

However, as he looked out into the hangar, accompanied by Shara, he saw no familiar faces. Something inside him had changed, he realised. He had lost something on Scarif that had not come back with him.

Shara, noticing his dull mood, attempted to strike up a conversation.

“Wanna know how my life’s been going, Andor?” She asked, turning away from her X-wing, which she’d been working on.

“Sure,” he replied flatly, shrugging.

“Well, that Pathfinders sergeant finally asked me on a date. The one who spilt the Corellian brandy on you, remember?” She asked, smiling. Shara knew that her closest friend was unhappy, and she was trying to distract him. He deserved to be distracted from his thoughts.

“I remember,” he replied, even though he didn’t. His voice and posture was still low and flat, and he gazed off into the distance at nothing in particular.

She realised that her tactic wasn’t working, and there was nothing she could do to make Cassian think about anything other than Scarif.

“I didn’t get to meet her, but I know she meant a lot to you,” she said gently. “I know they all meant a lot to you. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. _I_ should be sorry. I abandoned Jyn. I live, and they all died. I... I,” he began to sob, his emotions suddenly hitting him like a shuttle crashing on top of him. “I don’t deserve to still be alive. I’ve done terrible things and… and my friends died instead of me. And I know that Jyn is out there somewhere. And… And I can’t help her because I can’t even stop _kriffing_ crying!” He shouted. Without thinking, he kicked at a nearby crate, and the tools and spare parts inside when clattering to the ground, scattering all around.

“Nice job laserbrain!” A pilot he didn’t know shouted out from his Y-wing. Cassian shot him a dirty look, but said nothing. There was no point.

“Oh shut your stupid mouth Darklighter!” Shara yelled back.

“It’s not your fault Andor,” She said. “You shouldn’t feel guilty for being alive.”

“Leave me alone Shara,” he replied. “Please just go away.”

She looked hurt, but she nodded. She dropped her tools, and walked away from her fighter, heading back to the mess. He watched her as she walked away, feeling torn.

The rebellion had changed, and there was no going back to how things had been before. A small voice in his head asked him: _Do you really still want to be here? Are you really still wanted here?_

The alliance had seen him as expendable, but he had still been willing to sacrifice himself for the cause. And he had been so close, escaping into the atmosphere as he watched the awesome power of the Death Star’s green laser blast strike Scarif’s horizon, slowly but surely disintegrating the planet. And again, when their stolen shuttle was intercepted as they tried to escape. Where he had lost Jyn.

There was nothing left that he could give to the rebels; they had taken everything he had. And now, for the first time, he was considering abandoning the cause, the fight he had been in since he was six years old.

If he stayed, he was sure that he would never see Jyn again. But he knew there was a chance, a tiny chance, that she was still out there, and he could go back for her.

But what was more important to him? Jyn, who he had known for mere days? Or the rebellion, in which he had served for life?

To Cassian, the choice was clear.


	3. Persuasion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the empire grows more and more desperate to discover the location of the hidden rebel base, they 'persuade' Jyn to betray her new home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has pretty intense descriptions of violence, so this here is a warning if you aren't into that kind of stuff. Otherwise, please enjoy the chapter! <3

In Jyn’s cell, there was no clear passage of time. The dim red bulb was on constantly, and there was no way of telling day from night, even though the cycle on board the Death Star was artificial. Her food, which she wouldn’t really define as a “meal” (thin, foul-tasting nutrition paste), was delivered irregularly. As was her captor’s plan, she wasn’t sure if she had been in the cell for only a few hours, or if she had been in for days.

If it was not for the princess in the next cell, to whom she talked to in hushed whispers in between the periodical tapping sound caused by the buckethead guards roaming past, she was sure that she would have gone mad by now. She had not seen a person, human or otherwise, since her encounter with Grand Moff Tarkin. 

Mostly they talked about menial things; things that would distract them from their situation. That, and they were too cautious to talk about rebel matters, as neither of them knew who could be listening.

Jyn had asked about Leia’s home planet, and she liked to imagine it as she described its snow-capped mountains, the rolling green fields of starflowers, the lush Isatabith rainforest, the natural wonder of Cloudshape Falls, and the beauty of the pristine mountain palace, Leia’s home. It helped, being able to take herself away to a different place, a beautiful place. _Maybe,_ she thought to herself, _If I ever leave this place, I will travel to Alderaan, and take it all in._

In return, she told the princess of her childhood home on Lah’mu. She described, with detail she didn’t realise she still remembered, its rugged beauty, its pitch black sands and ragged mossy hills. She reminisced nostalgically about her family’s cosy farm. It was nothing compared to the palace of the house of Organa, she knew, but Leia loved the story anyway.

“Do you want go back?” the princess asked.

“No,” Jyn replied wistfully. “There’s nothing left for me there. Only ghosts.”

Leia didn’t reply, and Jyn sighed, leaning back on the uncomfortably hard bench. As soon as she lay down, the cell door hissed open. She jumped up in shock, hitting her elbow as she rose.

“Grand Moff Tarkin,” she said, as she saw the tall, gaunt man step into her cell, flanked by his buckethead guards. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”

“The pleasure is all mine, Miss Erso,” he replied with sickly sweet sarcasm. He turned to the trooper on his left. “Seize her,” he ordered.

Instinctively, Jyn backed against the wall of her cell, attempting to twist away from the incoming guards. Of course, in the confined space, there was no hope of escape. One kicked at the sensitive area behind her knees with his booted foot, and she was knocked down to her knees. The others then proceeded to tightly hook their arms around hers, dragging her to her feet.

Tarkin walked ahead, and his troopers followed, dragging Jyn with them. She was marched out of her cell, trying to regain her footing as she was pulled along inelegantly with her legs dangling underneath her.

Eventually, she was able to match their quick pace, stumbling over her legs from step to step. Tilting her head up, she took in her surroundings. She was being taken down a narrow corridor, the floor beneath her lined with heavy durasteel grating. It was illuminated by strips of white light fixed to the walls. It was not unlike the entrance to the vault in the citadel on Scarif. They moved past more cell doors identical to hers. She counted the numbers above the doors, which were descending.

  1. _2184\. 2183. 2182._



She continued to count, until they reached the number _2019._ Then they stopped, in front of an identical, yet ominously unmarked door.

“Come on in, Miss Erso,” Tarkin said, as the door opened. The room, like her cell, was lit only by a small red bulb. However, unlike her cell, there was no sink or toilet, only a simple bench with attached restraints. Jyn attempted to swallow the lump rising in her throat. The sight of the cuffs filled her with terror.

“Restrain the subject, bring in the IT-O,” Tarkin ordered.

“Yes sir,” the bucketheads replied, pulling her into the small room. Roughly, they threw her onto the bench. Two of the troopers took a hand each, placing it into the cuffs built into the bench and closing them shut. They then did the same with her feet, using the restraints attached to the underside of the hard, uncomfortable seat.

She tried to struggle, but here was no use. She was tied down to well to escape, and even if she escaped, the troopers would recapture her before she could take a single step. Resistance was futile.

“Jyn Erso,” Tarkin announced. “You refused to co-operate with me before. Unfortunately, I’ve had to resort to less… _friendly_ measures in order to learn the location of your hidden base, and the location of the stolen plans of this very space station.”

“I’m not telling you anything,” She spat. Tarkin didn’t say anything, but raised a brow, and stepped aside.

Through the door came a round, floating droid. It was fairly small, less than a metre wide. But it was terrifying. It was completely black, with a red blinking light in the centre. Attached to it was all manner of sinister instruments. Blades, needles, and some Jyn didn’t even recognise, or have any idea what in the galaxy they would do. She felt a knot in her stomach, and suddenly she wanted to throw up.

“This, miss Erso, is an IT-O advanced interrogation droid. I can assure you, even a second under the influence of the droid’s effect will cause excruciating pain on a level you have never, _never_ felt before,” He told her, trying to supress the smile that came to his face at the sight of seeing his prisoner squirm. “I will give you one final chance. Where is the location of the hidden base?”

The thought of the pain that the torture droid could bring sent a chill down her spine. However, she knew that she would rather feel all the pain in the universe than betray the alliance, her new family, _her home._

“No,” She replied quietly, staring straight at Tarkin.

“Very well,” He said. “Begin.”

Her breathing quickened as the droid made its way towards her. _It is only pain._ She told herself. _It is only pain. It is only pain._

Jyn attempted to lean back as it pricked her in the arm with one of its needles, and she saw a small amount of clear liquid coarse into her body.

“This, miss Erso, is a drug engineered by imperial scientists such as your father. It decreases your body’s pain threshold, making you more susceptible to the IT-O’s techniques,” he informed her, but Jyn wasn’t listening.

She closed her eyes tight. She didn’t want to have to look at the awful droid, nor at Tarkin’s twisted grin at seeing her in such terror and pain.

And then, from everywhere at once, she felt the pain. It was as if her nerves were on fire. In the back of her mind she heard screaming, but the agony was too great for her to realise that they were her own. The pain was all over, white-hot in her skin, muscles, veins, bones, in her legs, arms, head, neck and torso. There was no end.

Whether the torture lasted for seconds, minutes, days, or years, Jyn did not know. All she knew was hurting. She couldn’t remember a time before it, she couldn’t imagine being without it.

And then, suddenly, it stopped. Slowly, with the last of her energy, Jyn opened her eyes. Tarkin was still standing over her, smiling.

“Where is the base? Where are the plans?” He demanded. In reply, Jyn shakily shook her head. She had no energy left for words.

“Have it your way,” He told her. As soon as he spoke, it returned, and the agony was somehow even worse. She was wracked with stabs of agony, each as if she had been sliced open with a hot knife. Again she screamed, writhing in distress. She pulled at her restraints, shaking madly. This time, she kept her bloodshot eyes open, staring into Tarkin, her pupils dilated.

She didn’t feel human anymore, she felt like an animal. There was only one thing in her mind, and that was pain.

“Stop it! Stop it! Make it stop! Please!” She screamed, without realising she was doing so.

“This will all be over if you give us the information we need,” Tarkin told her.

“No! I won’t” She shouted back. And then, she screamed again. The pain was growing greater still, constant and coursing through her body with stronger anger than before. But she would not give up the information. _It is only pain. It is only pain._

_It is only pain._

Her body went limp, and she hung her head.

_It is only pain._


	4. Opportunity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After defecting from the rebel alliance, an opportunity presents itself to Cassian

The cantina was dark and shady, but still bustling and full of life. It seemed as if every species in the galaxy was gathered in this grimy hole-in-the-wall, all drinking and taking part in all kinds of depravity. It truly was a wretched hive of scum and villainy.

Cassian sat on his own at a booth in the corner, a nearly empty bottle of Corellian brandy in hand. He was half-heartedly watching the pod race showing on the small, flickering screen situated above the bar.

He had left Yavin 4 at night, aboard the transport ship which had been prepared for use on his reconnaissance mission. He had flown it to Takodana in the western reaches, where he had sold it off an elderly togruta in exchange for a good amount of unmarked credits.

With the credits, he bought a change of clothes, changing into them in a dirty refresher cubicle at the tiny spaceport.

Then, as he inconspicuously moved through the port, he found the captain of a small, independent cargo transport headed for the outer rim. The captain, a foul-mouthed mirialin, offered him passage if he had the credits, which he accepted. The crew, who had their own shady practices, were willing to take his credits without questioning who he was, or why he was headed away from civilization. Which was the way he liked to do things.

And so, he had arrived at the backwater world of Tatooine, with only the clothes on his back, his blaster, and a handful or credits to his name.

The Mos Eisley cantina was the perfect place to blend in, to become invisible. It was also the perfect place to lose oneself, to drown in bottles of Corellian brandy.

He sighed, leaning back against the dirty fabric of the booth. Absent-mindedly, he tapped at the scratched plastisteel tabletop with his fingers, in a pattern which corresponded to the upbeat rhythm which the bith musicians were playing in the opposite corner of the cantina.

“Well, well, well. I didn’t expect you and me to cross paths on this dusty old rock,” came a voice from nearby. Slowly, he looked up.

“Han Solo,” he said in disbelief. The other man slid into the booth, in the seat opposite him.

“Cassian Andor,” he replied, flashing his crooked grin. “What brings you here eh? On some daring mission with your rebel alliance? Whole thing’s a bunch of bantha dung if you ask me.”

“No. Not anymore,” He answered, kicking his feet up and placing them on top of the table, relaxing.

“Didn’t see that coming,” Solo said with a small laugh.

“Neither did I,” Cassian muttered sadly, looking down at nothing in particular.

“Well then, now that you’re a free man… how about you help me out on a job, huh?” He asked.

“How about this time… I break _your_ nose,” He replied.

“Very funny. You’ll get twenty percent of the cut, you know. The rest is for me and Chewie,” Solo offered.

“You must think I’m an idiot,” Cassian quipped. “Forty.”

“Thirty.”

“Thirty-five.”

“Fine,” Solo said, and reached out his arm. Cassian took hold of it, and they shook, closing the deal.

“So what’s the job?” Cassian asked.

They were interrupted by an altercation at the bar. The band stopped playing, and a customer appeared to be pushing a boy with shaggy blond hair away.

And then came a flash of light, and an arm was on the floor. Was it? Cassian had to do a double-take. _A lightsabre?_ It was gone as soon as he saw it, but it was definitely it. There was no mistaking the thin, elegant beam that was the mystical weapon of the long-gone jedi.

It was over as soon as it had started. The bar patrons went back to their drinks, and the musicians resumed as if nothing had happened. The chatter returned to the cantina.

“ _That_ is the job,” Solo told him.

“Well then… this is going to be fun,” Cassian said, with his first genuine grin in what had felt like years.

\--

The squad of stormtroopers had dragged the barely-conscious Jyn Erso down the prison corridor and back into cell 2186. They threw her down and she fell to the floor. She would have attempted to move, but the torture had sapped every last ounce of energy in her form from her.

“You can rot, rebel scum,” One spat, kicking at her just for the sake of it. Defensively, she drew herself back.

Once they left her alone in the cell, she curled herself into foetal position on the floor, as if holding herself would be the only thing that would keep her body intact. Her breathing was ragged, her lungs only capable of taking short, shallow breaths of the stale air on board.

Pain still lingered inside her. Her limbs throbbed with every small movement they made, and her head pounded, dulling her mind.

However, even in her shaky hold of reality, she knew that she had not given any information to the imperials, no matter what they had tried to squeeze it out of her.

Jyn’s mind replayed the events to her. All she could see, whether she closed her eyes or not, was the tiny yet terrifying torture droid, its blinking red light like an eye staring straight into her. And its evil instruments, poking, prodding and stabbing at her body, causing her agony greater than she had ever known.

She felt sick. No, she felt like she was going to be sick. With all of her strength, she pulled herself off the floor, and leant over the tiny sink. Coughing and spluttering, she emptied the contents of her stomach into the basin. Thankfully, there wasn’t much, due to the miniscule amount of food her captors had given her.

She pressed the button above, and standard synth-liquid flowed out of the tap, washing down the vomit. She splashed it on her face, but it did nothing to refresh her.

Slowly, she was coming to her senses. And as she did, more and more memories of her session in the interrogation chamber came back to her.

Tarkin has asked her incessantly, _where is the hidden base?_ He had smiled sweetly at her, his eyes shining with evil intent. He seemed to enjoy seeing her in pain, seeing her writhe and struggle against the restraints.

And when she had given in, he looked disappointed. And it was not only because she had refused to give him anything, but also because she was no longer showing her suffering for his amusement. It all seemed sick. The empire was truly evil.

Slowly, her muscles screaming out in pain, she climbed onto the hard bench. Jyn laid back, stretching and tensing her arms and legs, before releasing and curling back into a ball. To her disgust, she felt hot, salty tears as they began to well in her green eyes and roll down her cheeks.

Jyn felt her mind drifting into sleep, not from relaxation or comfort, but from pure exhaustion and deprivation. She closed her eyes.

Her father appeared before her, in the neat uniform he had always worn during their life on Coruscant. She looked around, and realised that that was where she was, in her the high-rise apartment of her early childhood, funded by the empire of course.

He picked her up, and she suddenly found that she was very small. Galen lifted her with ease.

 _“I will always protect you, stardust,”_ he told her, laying her down in her bed, the mattress soft as a cloud and the blankets warm and comforting. He planted a kiss on her cheek.

 _“I know Papa,”_ the young Jyn replied, before she closed her eyes and drifted away.


	5. Hyperspace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian leaves Tatooine with a new set of companions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has left feedback, it means a lot to me <3\. I hope you all enjoy this chapter, it's a bit of fun before we get back to our regularly scheduled angst.

Solo had left, presumably to talk to the clients that had caused so much trouble at the bar. Knowing him, he would swindle the travellers out of a few thousand more credits than any reputable trader would demand. But hiring a smuggler meant fewer questions, and the extra fee kept any customers out of the empire’s grip.

He swirled his bottle in his hand, before downing the remaining drops and standing, sliding out of the cramped corner booth.

Slowly, slightly tipsy from the multiple bottles of Corellian brandy, he walked up to the crowded bar to pay. As he stepped up, blending into the rest of the rabble with his unkempt stubble and dirty civilian clothes, he noticed a handful of bucketheads enter the cantina. There was no rush to their movement, and they had most likely just been called in to deal with a bar fight.

However, in order to stay on the safe side, he hung his head low, looking up out of the corner of his eye. His years of espionage had taught him how to fit perfectly into a scene, and observe.

As he had expected, they passed, knocking a few of the cantina patrons around, but leaving without causing any major stir. But seeing the empire’s presence all the way out on Tatooine made him nervous. Cassian, or at least his several fake identities he had adopted during his intelligence work for the rebellion, was a wanted man in several systems. He had to be careful.

He paid the seedy-looking bartender with his unmarked credits, and shoved his way away from the bar, now anxious to get off planet and back into the vast safety of space.

He eyed Solo through the crowd, sitting in a booth with a green-skinned rodian. He began to walk up, ready to leave.

However, as he moved towards the pair, he noticed something was amiss. The rodian had his blaster out, and was pointing it at Solo from across the table. He reached his hand down, wrapping his fingers around his own blaster, tucked into his belt.

Cassian quickened his pace, shoving past a group of drunkards who had crowded around the screen televising the pod race, all yelling for their favourite.

He was mere steps away from Solo when the blast rang throughout the cantina. Thick black smoke clouded around the booth, and he couldn’t make out whether or not Solo had been hit.

He then realised that the cantina had fallen silent, and the patrons were all looking his way. He turned around, waving them away.

“Back to your drinks,” He heard a voice shout from behind the smoke, and he grinned as Solo stood up, walking away. “Time to go,” he muttered, tossing credits towards the bartender.

“Lizard seemed angry,” Cassian mentioned casually. “So who’ve you been scamming this time?”

“Hutt,” Solo replied simply, shrugging. They walked briskly down the narrow alley, in between the rough sandstone buildings of Mos Eisley. It seemed that everything on this planet was some shade of brown. Even the sky had a reddish tinge to it.

“The _Hutts_? Are you mad?” Cassian asked, exasperated. “To be completely honest I’m surprised you aren’t dead already.”

“You don’t know anything about smuggling, kid.” Solo told him. He then grinned, placing a hand to his chest, pointing at himself. “I, personally, am on excellent terms with Jabba the Hutt. Me and him, we have an understanding.”

“Sure seemed like it,” Cassian murmured under his breath, but Solo either didn’t hear or didn’t care.

It was then that he first considered that he had in fact made a bad decision. There he was, a rebel defector, wanted by the empire, in the company of a man wanted by the Hutt clan, and in the heart of Hutt space. He let out a small laugh at his situation, shaking his head. All while he grasped his blaster tight.

“Hurry up kid, these customers don’t seem to be the kind who are eager to wait around,” Solo said, annoyed.

“Where are we going, anyway?” Cassian asked, as he’s already lost his sense of direction is the winding, darkened streets of the town.

“Mos Eisley spaceport, docking bay ninety-four,” Solo replied, not looking around.

“So do you still have the falcon?” Cassian inquired curiously. “Or did some other lowlife steal it off you like you did off Lando Calrissian?” He quipped.

“Funny. And I won it off Lando, fair and square,” Solo said, turning around and pointing a finger at Cassian’s chest. “You were there; you know what happened!”

Cassian, pettily refusing to acknowledge that Solo was in fact correct, shrugged carelessly. “Let’s just get to the ship,” He replied.

They walked in silence then, both of them knowing how to not draw attention to themselves. According to Han, Chewbacca had already gone ahead and was preparing for take-off.

Mos Eisley was dirty and crowded, just like the cantina. On every corner, shady individuals huddled in their ragged cloaks, concealing their faces. Street vendors were flogging their wares, most of which looked at least suspicious, and some which looked definitely not legal. The streets themselves weren’t paved, but were simple dirt and sand which blew about in the wind, reducing visibility considerably for anyone attempting to traverse the town. In a strange way, there was also a charm to the place. This far out, deep in the outer rim and Hutt space, the empire’s grasp was much less firm. Tatooine wasn’t ruled by the draconian imperial laws and regulations. This was, for the most part, a free planet.

Cassian knew that they were nearing the spaceport when he heard the noise of ships heading off-world and coming in to land. These weren’t the sounds of the light and agile Starfighters he had grown used to during his time in the rebellion, instead these were loud heavy freighters. Most of these ships seemed to have been cobbled together from parts of other crafts, creating bizarre, ungainly vessels of which Cassian was shocked could even lift of the ground, let alone make it out of the atmosphere and into space.

“Docking bay ninety-four,” Solo announced, drawing to a halt in front of an unassuming red-brown door. He smashed a code into a dusty keypad to the right, and the door shakily hissed open.

_Is there anything on this planet that isn’t broken?_ Cassian thought, smirking slightly.

The smirk was wiped from his face when he heard a low, booming voice call out in Huttese.

“Wait here,” Han whispered to him. “Keep that blaster handy, captain.”

As much as it irked him to take orders from Solo, he stayed put, keeping his blaster primed and ready to shoot. He waited, attempting to make out what the Hutt was saying to Solo as he slowly walked, no, _slimed,_ his way around the docking bay. Unfortunately, his Huttese had never been that good, and right now it was especially rusty.

To his credit, Han seemed to be handling things quite well. Every now and then the Hutt would let out a deep, rumbling laugh, and his entourage of bounty hunters was on alert, but they didn’t appear as if they were about to attack.

And then, it seemed to be over. Han walked over the Hutt’s tail, eliciting a high-pitched screech from the oversized slug, and up the waiting boarding ramp and onto his Corellian freighter, the _Millennium Falcon._

“Come on kid!” He shouted out, and Cassian emerged from his observation point near the door, and walked through the dusty docking bay.

As he reached the ship, he saw another group arriving, presumably Solo’s clients. One was a boy who didn’t look a day over twenty, who had innocent blue eyes and messy, shaggy blond hair. An old man, with an unkempt white-grey beard, shrouded in a ragged dark robe. And two droids: a copper coloured protocol droid, and a stout blue and white astromech unit.

“What a piece of junk,” He heard the boy exclaim, which made Cassian scoff. Doubts about its captain, Han Solo, were deserved, but there was no denying that the Falcon was the fastest freighter in the galaxy. It could even outrun the gargantuan imperial star destroyers.

“She’ll make point five past light speed!” He heard Han shout out, sounding slightly offended. “She may not look like much but she’s got it where it counts, kid. I made a lot of special modifications myself!”

The old man seemed to nod, as if he was both apologising and agreeing.

“But,” Solo continued. “We’re a little rushed so if you’d just get on board, we’ll get out of here.”

The others followed Cassian on board, right as a squad of bucketheads ran urgently into the docking bay.

“Stop that ship! Blast ‘em!” They shouted, an immediately bright red laser bolts were shooting out from both sides, Cassian and Solo both pulling out their blasters to defend themselves. Shots ricocheted off the walls as they both ran into the ship.

“Chewie! Get us out of here!” Solo shouted, and the Falcon roared as it launched into the atmosphere.

However, they were barely out of the atmosphere when they saw to imperial cruisers in the distance. Automatically, Cassian’s mind was taken back to his escape from Scarif, back to where the destroyer had intercepted them.

Then, ‘Them’ had meant him and Jyn Erso. Now ‘them’ meant Cassian and a group of people he barely knew.

His thoughts were interrupted by a violent shudder, and he switched back to reality right as the Falcon lurched forward, jumping into hyperspace.


	6. Haunted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jyn is visited by a ghost of her past

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ooh boy, I'm getting this chapter out at 1am, I'm trying to balance my writing with school and work right now so everythings a bit hectic...anyway, I hope you all enjoy <3

“It pains me greatly to tell you that I have signed the order to terminate your life, Miss Erso,” Grand Moff Tarkin announced, standing on the threshold of Jyn’s cell, his tall thin frame blocking out the light from the corridor outside. His tone did not sound at all sincere, and he was making no attempt to try to.

Jyn didn’t look up. She was backed into the corner of her cell, huddled on the ground. She hung her head low, and her legs were drawn up towards her torso, her arms wrapped around them. She gripped herself tightly, as if she would fall apart if she let go.

“We have been kind enough to give you every chance to give us the information that we have asked for, my dear,” Tarkin said. When she didn’t respond, he continued. “Such a pity, to have to waste the life of such a promising young woman, with such a prestigious name.”

Jyn wasn’t sure when Tarkin left, or how long he talked for. But when she finally looked up, he was gone, and she was greeted by the imposing black door of the cell.

She felt like pieces of her mind were missing. She knew who she was, she knew where she was.

“My name is Jyn Erso, daughter of Galen and Lyra Erso,” She announced to the silent room, her voice shaking. “I am on board the Death Star.”

But something felt off, something felt surreal. Jyn felt like she was in a dream, as if she was in another body, looking through another’s eyes, speaking through another’s mouth.

A tiny, still reasonable, part of her mind felt pathetic. The empire had beaten her. They had crushed the life out of her, chewing her up and then spitting her back out.

Jyn supposed it had started with the interrogation. And then the interrogations that followed. It had become routine. The troopers would storm into her cell, drag her to the chamber, and subject her to agony which seemed to become worse and worse every time she felt it.

And all the while Tarkin would stand over her, demanding that she tell him the location of the rebel base.

At first she had fought back. When they came into her cell she would attempt to twist away, to run out into the corridor and out of the detention block. She never thought about what she would do once she escaped. She was no pilot, so it wasn’t as if she could steal a TIE and fly away from the battle station.

Of course, she never got to the point where she needed a plan. The troopers would catch her before she could take a step away from her, twisting her towards the ground and giving her a sharp kick to the gut for her disobedience.

So, eventually, she had stopped fighting back. Resistance to her captors was futile. She would sit submissively in the corner of her cell, in a position similar to the one she was currently in, her body tucked into her arms.

They would come in and pull her to her feet, and she wouldn’t resist as they pulled her down the corridor towards the interrogation chamber. She wouldn’t kick or scream as the IT-O droid attacked her with its needles and electrodes.

However, she never gave any information to Tarkin. They may have destroyed Jyn Erso, but they would never be able to extract anything from her.

 _“I’m proud of you Star-Dust”_ Came a voice, and Jyn glanced up. Over her stood her father, his features rugged and clothes loose and dirty. Howe he had been on their farm on Lah’mu.

“Papa?” She asked hoarsely, her voice barely above a whisper.

Shakily, she pulled herself to her feet, her back crashing against the wall as she lost her balance in her attempt to stand up. She pushed an arm against the wall, righting herself. Jyn reached her arm forward, but somehow her father was out of her touch.

“I tried to be strong Papa,” she said, as she felt hot, salty tears begin to run down her face. “I tried to do what’s right, to _fight_ for what’s right.”

 _“You’ve been so brave, my Jyn. You’ve brought hope to the galaxy. And I am so proud, so proud,”_ Galen replied, smiling.

“And…and Mama?” she asked, still supporting her weight with the hand leant against the wall.

 _“Your mother is so proud of you too, Star-Dust. And she misses you with all her heart,”_ He said.

“Why did you come?” Jyn whispered, stepping closer to her father. However, he seemed to move farther away from her the nearer she was.

 _“You have set in place a chain of events which will change the fate of the galaxy. The full terror of the Empire is about to be unleashed. But, because of you, my Jyn, the galaxy has something the Empire doesn’t have,”_ He told her.

“Hope,” Jyn replied. He was both completing her father’s sentence, and repeating the words Cassian had said to her in Jedha city, what felt to her now as years ago. It felt disconnected, like the memory was from another life.

“Rebellions are built on hope,” Jyn said quietly.

 _Do not lose hope, Star-dust,”_ Galen whispered.

“Papa,” Jyn began. “I can’t fight anymore. I’ve spent all my years alone building a wall around myself that no one could get through. And now it’s gone and crumbled away and everyone who looks can see how truly broken I am. I’m not strong Papa!”

_“You are so strong Jyn, and so brave.”_

Jyn nodded in reply, but she didn’t really believe it.

 _“Tell me you understand,”_ Galen asked of her, like he always would when she was a small child.

“I understand,” She said slowly.

 _“I love you Star-Dust,”_ He murmured.

Jyn closed her eyes. “I love you too Papa,” She whispered.

And when she opened her eyes he was gone, as suddenly as he had appeared.

Slowly, she sank back down towards the floor. Her father’s words were vivid in her memory.

_The full terror of the Empire is about to be unleashed._

\--

The cabin of the _Millennium Falcon_ was cramped and a little grimy. The plasticloth fabric of the booth surrounding the glitchy, outdated Dejarik table was torn in some places and emitted the smell of old things.

Cassian sat in an old flight chair, one which had been retired from the cockpit and was now shoved into the corner of the Falcon’s cabin. Lounging back, he absent-mindedly fidgeted with his blaster; dismantling it, repairing it, then spinning it around like a gun-slinging smuggler from an old spice-planet holo.

Chewbacca, the tall, shaggy Wookie that was Solo’s first mate, was wrapped up in a game of Dejarik with the protocol droid. Of course, playing with a Wookie guaranteed periodical enraged outbursts, and he had grown used to them, drowning them out in the same way that he drowned out the constant hum of the Falcon’s overworked hyperdrive.

He was far more interested in the activity of the boy and the old man. It was true, they really were force users, like Chirrut. But this pair was more. They wielded lightsabers, the very same as the mystical Jedi of old. The elder, who had introduced himself as Ben Kenobi, seemed to be training the younger one, Luke.

A floating grey orb directed blasts at him, which he attempted to deflect with the glowing blue laser of his weapon.

“Remember, a Jedi can feel the force _flowing_ through him,” Old Ben reminded Luke, as he continually missed the blasts aimed at him.

“You mean it controls your actions?” Luke asked.

“Partially. But it also obeys your commands.” He answered.

Luke, who was distracted for a moment, cringed as a blast struck him in the leg. At the sight, Solo let out a loud laugh from his seat.

“Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid,” He said.

“I’m inclined to agree,” Cassian replied.

“You don’t believe in the force, do you,” Luke challenged, looking disappointed.

“Kid, I’ve flown from one side of this galaxy to the other,” Han told him, leaning back in his chair. “I’ve seen a lot of strange stuff. But I’ve never seen anything to make me believe that there’s one all-powerful force controlling everything.” He paused, shaking his head and grinning. “There’s no mystical energy field controls my destiny! It’s all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense.”

“I suggest you try it again, Luke,” Ben said, rising to his feet. He handed Luke a visored helmet, which blocked out his vision. “This time, let go of your conscious self…and act on instinct.”

Luke laughed. “But with the blast shield down, I can’t even see!” He replied. “How am I supposed to fight?”

“Your eyes can deceive you. Don’t trust them,” Ben answered simply.

Cassian went back to watching Luke practice with amusement. He seemed to still be distracted, missing the bolts and being hit with them instead. It was mildly entertaining for a few minutes, before he decided to continue fiddling with his blaster.

“Looks like we’re coming up on Alderaan,” Han announced, as an alarm began blaring throughout the cabin. Alderaan, of course, being the planet that the clients had paid the unnecessarily large amount to be transported to; discreetly and with no questions asked.

And as the group began to move towards the cockpit for the landing approach, a strange, unnatural feeling washed over him, causing him to stop and stand on the spot. It felt as if someone was…reaching out to him, someone very far away. And they whispered something to him, words he heard with his mind and not his ears.

He was suddenly reminded of something he had happened to hear old Ben say before, in passing. _As if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced._ He had judged the old man as slightly mad, and hadn’t really given much mind to what he had said.

But now, words had been whispered to him, unsettling and eerie.

_The full terror of the Empire is about to be unleashed._


	7. Alderaan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Millenium Falcon jumps from Hyperpace, and they don't find what they were expecting.

When the _Millennium Falcon_ exited hyperspace, there was no sign of any planet nearby, let alone Alderaan. Instead they had come out of an asteroid field.

_An asteroid field? In deep space?_

“What the…” Han mumbled, confused, as Chewie roared in frustration. “It’s not on any of the charts!” He shouted.

“What’s going on?” Luke asked, as he and old Ben rushed into the cramped cockpit.

“Our position’s correct, but no Alderaan,” Solo replied.

“No Alderaan…” Cassian whispered, mostly to himself.

“What do you mean? Where is it?” Luke demanded.

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, kid,” Han replied. “It ain’t there. It’s been completely blown away.”

“What? How?” Luke was shocked.

“…The planet killer,” Cassian began slowly.

“Destroyed, by the empire,” Ben said, interjecting and completing his sentence.

“The entire Starfleet couldn’t destroy the whole planet. It’d take a thousand ships with more firepower than I’ve…” Solo began to argue, but he was cut off by an alarm from the ship’s scanner. A lone TIE came into view.

“It wasn’t the fleet,” Cassian warned, but he was cut off as Solo and Chewbacca took action against it.

“Was it following us?” Luke asked, panicking.

“No,” Ben answered. “It is a short range fighter.”

“There aren’t any bases around here, where did it come from?” Solo asked, quickly and deliberately fiddling with the controls of the Falcon.

And at that moment Cassian knew exactly where the fighter had come from.

“We need to get out of here. And fast,” He demanded.

“But we only just got here!” Luke said. “Maybe we could follow it, see where it comes from.” He suggested, with good intentions.

 Of course, he had no idea what lay ahead. The only person who seemed to have any knowledge of the capabilities of the Death Star, and that it even existed, was Ben, the crazy old man.

“I know where it came from. It came from the Death Star, from the planet killer. And if the Empire has brought its weapon here, there’s nothing we can do. We have to get out, now!” Cassian said, raising his voice has he repeated his original demand.

“Sure is leaving in a hurry,” Luke said. “If they identify us we’re in big trouble.”

Of course. After the altercation on Tatooine, the Empire would be looking for this particular Corellian freighter. And to think that Cassian thought he was through with the Empire.

“Not if I can help it,” Han replied. “Chewie, jam its transmissions,” he ordered, and Chewie began flicking switches which were located next to this large furry head.

“May as well let it go, it’s too far out of range,” Old Ben suggested.

“It isn’t out of range,” Cassian warned, but once again fell on deaf ears. “And we need to get as far away from here as we can.”

“Not for long,” Solo spat back, priming the Falcon’s laser.

The TIE flew out in front of them, tempting them to give chase.

“A fighter that size couldn’t get this far into deep space on its own,” Old Ben said, realisation dawning upon him. He glanced back at Cassian. “The Empire is near.”

“But he must have gotten lost, been part of a convoy or something,” Luke argued, apparently not believing in the imperial superweapon.

_To think that he could believe in a magical power, but not a very real planet destroyer._

“Well he ain’t going to be around long enough for him to tell anybody about us,” Han said, preparing to shoot the fighter down.

They continued to give chase, as a small, round object in the distance began to grow bigger.

“He looks like he’s heading for that small moon,” Luke observed.

“I think I can get him before he gets there,” Han replied. “He’s almost in range.”

“That’s no moon,” Cassian began, looking up. And now they were all listening to him.

“It’s a space station,” Ben said, his eyes widening as he spoke.

Han shook his head in disbelief. “Too big to be a space station,” He reasoned, but his face fell in shock as they drew closer.

“I have a very bad feeling about this,” Luke murmured. Just like Kay-Tu had said all the way back on Scarif. Cassian had told him to be quiet.

“You don’t say…” He fumed. “Quickly! Turn back while we still can!” He barked.

“Turn the ship around,” Ben said in agreement.

“Yeah…” Han muttered. “I think you’re right.”

Solo pulled at the Falcon’s steering, but its course didn’t alter. He pulled again, harder this time, attempting a sharp bank to the side. But the ship continued to make a beeline towards the incoming Death Star.

“Chewie! Lock in the auxiliary power!” He shouted, growing desperate. However, there was nothing they could do but stare helplessly as the battle station pulled them in. The TIE had tricked them, luring them into the pull of the Death Star’s tractor beam.

“There’s got to be something you can do!” Luke pleaded, his voice fast and panicked.

“There’s nothing I can do about it, kid,” Solo said, as he urgently tried to regain control of the freighter. “They’re not going to get me without a fight,” he promised.

“You can’t win,” Ben told him, but it was directed at them all. “But there _are_ alternatives to fighting.”

The station loomed closer, until it engulfed their view, blocking out the empty space of the asteroid field which used to be Alderaan behind them.

The planet, completely destroyed. Like Jedha City, like Scarif. But somehow this time it was even more powerful. Cassian wondered how many people had died, no, been _murdered_ , in cold blood, by the Empire that day. But then he realised he didn’t really want to know the answer.

The ship was towed by the invisible energy of the tractor beam into the mouth one of the presumably thousands of hangars. It felt as if they were being swallowed up whole, which wasn’t really all that far from the truth.

All around, officers in their neat olive uniforms, troopers in their white armour, and pilots in their black flight suits swarmed about. They were set down, surprisingly gently, in the centre of the hangar.

Cassian’s right hand instinctively darted down to his belt, gripping onto his blaster. However, it wouldn’t be any use against an entire army of imperials, within the very heart of their super-weapon.

And then, almost like it had walked into his head fully formed, a plan dawned on him.

“Solo,” he whispered. “Are the smuggling compartments still here?”

“Well of course they are, kid,” He answered incredulously. “What in the galaxy else would I do with them?”

“Well, it’s time we smuggle ourselves,” He began, before leaning in closer to divulge his plan.

\--

“Boy it’s lucky you had these compartments,” Luke said, as they carefully and quietly removed the grates from the floor so that they could climb out.

“Use them for smuggling,” Han explained. “Never thought I’d be smuggling myself in them,” he said, shooting a glance at Cassian.

“You can thank me later for saving your life,” Cassian replied, as he ungracefully hauled himself out.

“This is ridiculous,” Han fumed. “Even if I could take off I’d never get past the tractor beam.”

“Leave that to me,” Old Ben told him, to which Solo raised his brows in disbelief.

“Damn fool, I knew that you were going to say that,” Han said, a hint of sarcasm in his tone.

“Who’s the more foolish?” Ben asked. “The fool? Or the fool who follows him?”

In response, Chewbacca roared, his head poking out of the top of the compartment. Cassian suppressed a laugh, focusing on climbing out and finding a vantage point from which he could strike any bucketheads that came inside.

Fist, however, came the scanning crew. They had barely stepped inside before they were hit by two blaster bolts. Luke caught them before they could hit the floor with a suspiciously loud noise, and moved them into the corner.

“Hey!” Solo shouted out, imitating the scanning technician. “Could you give us a hand up here?”

In response, they heard the tell-tale sound of a couple of troopers marching on board. They too, caught by the element of surprised, succumbed to blasts from Han’s and Cassian’s blasters.

“Good plan, kid,” Solo admitted quietly, as they dragged the troopers over to wear they had already hidden the scanning crew.

\--

Cassian secured the buckles and straps of the Stormtrooper armour. As he looked around, he saw Han and Luke do the same. He grinned from beneath the bucket.

“So,” he began, his voice distorted through the white helmet. “Time for part two.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please tell me what you thought of this chapter (Did you guys like Cassian saying "that's no moon" instead of Obi Wan saying the line?) I promise, things are going to start getting much more juicy from here on in! Thank you all for reading, I hope you enjoyed <3


	8. Rescue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which an unexpected reunion occurs onboard the Death Star

Making the dangerous detour to the detention block hadn’t been part of Cassian’s plan. It was the kid’s idea, when the droid had found data in the Death Star’s main computer that Leia, the princess of what had once been Alderaan, and was now just a hole in the sky where a planet had once been, was imprisoned there.

Solo, who had naturally decided he was in charge while old Ben had left to try and find a way to disable the tractor beam, hadn’t been convinced. But Luke had promised him money, riches…more credits than he could imagine as his reward for saving her. That had sold him. Cassian supposed that he would go along with it to. He seemed to be a pirate or some kind of smuggler now anyway, joining in Han’s shady, less-than-legal business. The extra credits wouldn’t hurt. And who said he couldn’t handle a few bucketheads?

To his credit, Luke’s plan was smart. Him, Cassian and Solo were all dressed in imperial uniform; they could get in without raising the alarm. And after he had restrained Chewbacca, not without heated argument from the wookie, they had a ‘prisoner’, and a reason to get into the detention block.

And so that was how they found themselves in this mess, surrounded by the corpses of troopers and a handful of administrative officers in green uniforms, with someone from another division calling them through the comms system to report, to tell them that everything was normal.

“Report!” The disembodied voice shouted through the tinny speakers of the computer. “Status update!”

“Uh, everything is under control…um, situation…normal,” Solo mumbled into the inbuilt commlink, unconvincingly conjuring words out of thin air and struggling to string them together coherently.

“What happened?” The voice demanded.

“Ahhh…had a slight weapons malfunction,” he began, looking around as if the dark, blank walls of the detention block would give him inspiration. “But uh, E-Everything’s perfectly alright now…we’re fine, we’re all fine here…now…thank you,” he said, raising his tone on the final words as if he was asking a question. It would almost be comical, if it wasn’t probably going to cost them all their lives.

“Are you mad?” Cassian mouthed at Solo, who shot back a look that said: _Well what else in the galaxy was I supposed to say?_

“We’re sending a squadron in,” the voice told him.

“Uhhhh…negative, negative,” Han replied. “We have a, uhh, reactor leak here…ah, now give us a few minutes to log it down. Uh…large leak, very dangerous.”

“Who is this?” The voice asked in disbelief. Their act was up.

He could have at least waited for Cassian to answer. He was, of course, the only one in the group with prior experience of impersonating imperials.

In response, Solo erratically blasted at the computer, shutting it off in an un-orthodox fashion.

“Uhh…boring conversation anyway,” He muttered.

“I’ll go and warn Luke,” Cassian told him, before he turned and ran up the barely-lit, narrow passageway, somewhere in which the princess was being held.

He reached him, and Luke was already helping the princess out of the cell. This was the first time that Cassian had seen in person Leia Organa, Princess of Alderaan and daughter of Bail Organa, a junior senator and a known rebel leader. She was respected throughout the galaxy, having achieved more for the alliance than many others ever had or would, all before the age of twenty.

She didn’t look all that inspiring now, however. She was dirty, her white gown ripped and torn. But in her face he saw determination, and he realised why so many people were willing to follow her, even in this state.

“We have to go now, we’ve got company!” Cassian demanded, and Luke nodded. They began to turn, ready to move and escape before reinforcements arrived. However, Leia stood still on the spot.

 “The girl in the next cell…” Leia began, looking around with a slightly dazed expression.

“We don’t have time for this,” Cassian said gruffly.

“Oh, what do you know?” Leia snapped. “If you’re getting me out, you’re getting her out too. Or I will march myself back into that cell and just wait for Vader and his goons to come and terminate me!”

“We can’t rescue every single prisoner,” He snapped, his head turned slightly away, anticipating the reinforcements that would be coming at any second.

“No!” Luke argued, seemingly shocked that Cassian would even suggest leaving an innocent person behind. The kid had obviously never seen war. He hadn’t learnt yet that not everyone can be saved, a truth that Cassian had learned the hard way, time and time again.

 Luke shoved past, heading toward the cell next to the princess’s. Cell _2186._ Shaking his head, Cassian reluctantly followed. He punched in the code that they had gained when the astromech droid had hacked into the main computer system.

The heavy, unassuming door hissed open.

And as he stepped forward, Cassian’s heart skipped a beat.

Slowly, shakily, without his mind even realising he was doing so, he lifted his hands to his head, releasing the latch that locked the helmet to the rest of his suit of armour. It released with a _click,_ and he unsteadily pulled it away from his head.

He had thought, maybe, through the low-visibility of the helmet’s visor, his eyes had been playing a trick on him. But they weren’t. And what he was seeing in front of him with his own two eyes was true. It wasn’t made up in his head. It was real.

 “Jyn?” Cassian breathed, glued to the spot in the doorway.

It seemed like a moment from a dream. Ever since he had lost her on Scarif he had tried his very hardest to push thoughts of her to the back of his mind. He had resigned himself to the fact that he would never see her again, that she was dead.

But Jyn Erso wasn’t dead, and she wasn’t gone. She was there, right in front of him.

Jyn didn’t move from her position, hunched over on the cold hard bench. She looked up at him, her piercing green eyes set heavily into her gaunt face. Slowly, she opened her mouth, but words didn’t come out.

She didn’t look like how he remembered her. Before, even as they had faced death together on Scarif, she had had light in her eyes, fuelled by a fire burning somewhere deep inside of her. And she looked smaller than he remembered, as if she had shrunk. Or maybe it was because her bones stuck out and her clothes hung limply off her. Jyn looked malnourished, beaten down, defeated.

Tentatively, he stepped forward, towards the small woman. “Jyn,” he repeated. “Jyn…it’s me.”

He moved closer to her, until he was about an arm’s distance away from her, and knelt, lowering himself so that they sat eye-to-eye. From there, he looked deeply into hers. He saw fear, he saw defeat. What he saw was nothing like the Jyn he had known, fuelled by a fire which drew her to a fight like a moth to a flame.

And then, shakily, she reached out a hand. It was thin and pale, her knuckles overly prominent. The imperial bastards had so obviously starved her. Arm outstretched, she brushed over Cassian’s face, over his rough, unkempt stubble.

“Are you real?” Jyn asked in a whisper, her voice coarse.

Cassian smiled sadly. He wanted nothing more than to embrace the frightened woman, to hold her in his arms and somehow promise her that everything was going to be okay. But he knew that any sudden movement would terrify her, make her flinch and turn away, like a timid animal.

“I’m real,” He replied softly. “It’s me. It’s Cassian, Jyn. I’m real.”

She paused, and he saw through her eyes that her mind was moving, _processing_ , taking it all in. Her mouth fell open as she kept her hand on his face. He wasn’t sure if she believed him or not.

“Cassian,” She whispered.

She said his name and it felt like a knife had been driven into his heart from the sheer, raw emotion of it all. His breathing was ragged as he tried to swallow back a sob which was rising in his throat. He tried to blink away hot, salty tears that stang his eyes as he looked at her. They ran down his cheeks, and he wondered if she could feel them, with her hand on him.

After a moment, a ghost of a smile spread across her face. “You…you came back for me,” she gasped. “You came back for me.”

He was brought back to the hangar on Yavin 4. Jyn had come out of the war room defeated, she had been ready to fight for the alliance, but the spineless senators had refused to join her. And then, he remembered how she had looked at her, part of the cold hard wall she put up to protect herself melting away as he saw kindness and hope in her eyes.

 _No one has ever come back for me before,_ she had said quietly to him.

So he knew what he would say back to her. 

“I always come back for you, Jyn Erso,” He told her. Carefully, he drew himself to his feet, slowly so as to not startle Jyn.

Cassian knew that they had to leave. As much as he wanted to let this reunion stretch on forever, for her to never let him go, he knew they had to get out. Luke, Han and the princess were waiting for them just outside, and the reinforcements drew closer with every moment he wasted looking at her.

He took her arm, gently placing it over his shoulder as he helped her to her feet. He was right to do so, as when she stood she could barely support her own weight.

“That’s it, that’s it,” He whispered softly to her, his mouth right near her ear. Cassian stood still, taking Jyn’s weight and holding an arm around her back to steady her as she gradually regained her balance. “We need to go now.”

Somewhere in the back of her mind, his words registered with her. In reply, Jyn gave him a jerky nod.

Tentatively and cautiously, Cassian stepped forward, helping Jyn along with him. Her legs were stiff as they moved, she obviously hadn’t moved far from her cold bench while she had been shut away in the dark cell.

However, before they were able to step out of the cell, he heard blasts ring out outside, in the corridor. Instinctively, he backed away from the doorway and against the wall, dragging Jyn with him.

She tried to scream out, but before she could, Cassian shoved his hand over her mouth, effectively muffling her.

“Shhh,” he whispered, hushing her. He listened carefully to the blasts ricocheting off the walls in the detention block, and he realised that whoever was shooting at the others did not realise that he and Jyn were there.

She struggled against him, her breathing quickening. He felt her chest rise and fall against him as it became increasingly heavy. She seemed to be on the brink of hyperventilating.

 _This is not like Jyn,_ he said to himself. The Jyn Erso he knew was fearless. She was a fighter, a survivor, not a scared little girl.

_What had the Empire done to her?_

_They would pay,_ he told himself. _They would pay._

But first, he had to get them out. There and then they were trapped in the tiny cell. If they stepped out, they would surely be caught in the crossfire, shot, and killed. They would have come all this way for nothing.

Jyn whimpered against Cassian’s calloused hands as they huddled in the corner. As he held her tightly against him, he realised that he could feel her heart beat against his. It was fast, much faster than his own.

“It’s okay,” He breathed, in an attempt to calm her. “We need to be quiet.”

She slowed her breathing, sharply exhaling through her nose as she ceased her struggles against him. And then, instead, she leaned in against him. But still, the sound of every single blast which zoomed through the corridor made her flinch instinctively.

If their lives weren’t hanging in the balance, if they weren’t separated from certain death by a mere wall, maybe that moment would have felt different. They were, of course, very close to each other. Her clothes had worn thin, and feel them he could feel the lines of her body, her back and her hips digging into his chest. In return, his arms were wrapped tightly around her body, holding her tightly to him.

Something felt right, the way Cassian Andor and Jyn Erso held each other.

However, before he could even think about that, the moment was interrupted. The shooting stopped, and then suddenly the only sound he could hear was the rapid beating of their two hearts.

But the silence didn’t last for long, as it was followed almost immediately by the sound of heavy boots running down the durasteel grating which covered the floor of the corridor. It was impossible to tell an exact number, but it was abundantly clear that there were a lot of them.

A lot of them, headed their way.

He hoped that if they stood still and silent enough, they would be unnoticeable, and the troopers would simply run past them. He didn’t know what had happened to the others, if they had been caught, if they had escaped, if they were dead. But he did know that they would have to find their own way out.

However, the odds hadn’t really been in Cassian’s favour as of late.

“Sir,” came a muffled voice from the other side of the dark cell wall. He held his breath, not even daring to exhale as it could alert the guards to their presence. “This door is open,”

_Kriff._

Slowly, Cassian turned, in a way shielding Jyn with his body if any of them dared enter the cell. He was silent, reverting back to his spy intuition. Carefully, quietly, and very deliberately, he leant forward to get a look at whoever was out there.

He did a rough head-count of the troopers from his vantage point. He could see them, but he was _nearly_ sure that they couldn’t see him, at least they hadn’t yet. There was maybe ten, maybe fifteen, maybe twenty. He had been right, there was a lot of them.

“Search it,” Another ordered, and instinctively Cassian backed away to the wall, stopping right in front of where Jyn was standing silently.

Five or so troopers flooded in through the small entrance. “Intruder! Halt!” They shouted, drawing their blasters.

As soon as they spoke Cassian reached for his, as quick as a fighter jumping to hyperspace. His hand wrapped around it but –

It wasn’t there. His fingers just grasped at air.

_Where in the galaxy was it?_

“Blast,” he breathed, as they raised their blasters and pointed them at him. With no other option, he slowly raised his hands.

He felt a sharp blow to his side as he was pushed out of the way. It took a moment for him to realise that it was Jyn who had hit him. Trembling, terrified Jyn.

_Pew! Pew! Pew! Pew! Pew!_

Five blasts rang out in quick succession, lighting the cramped cell up in red. The troopers fell to the ground one after the other, all before Cassian could turn around.

But when he did, he saw Jyn, awkwardly holding his blaster which looked oversized in her tiny thin hands. She was surrounded by bodies much larger than her, sprawled across the ground and clearly dead. The expression on her face was hard, her lips twisted into a thin line and her brows narrowed as her eyes seemed to widen, as if she was shocked by her action.

He stood there in shock for a moment, until the familiar sound of urgent footsteps snapped him back into reality.

“Time to go,” he muttered, leaning down and grabbing one of the dead troopers’ blasters as he took Jyn’s hand and began to run out of the cell with her.

His booted feet thundered down the corridor as he sprinted, dragging Jyn behind him. She struggled to keep up with him, tripping over her feet as she turned around to fire at the troopers pursuing them.

“Come on!” He shouted, adrenaline coursing through him as he tried to help her keep up. He didn’t dare turn back to look, all he focused on was running, putting one foot in front of the other as quickly as he possibly could.

He rounded a corner, into another row of cells. The detention block seemed to go on and on forever. And down that corridor was even more troopers.

Panicking, he spun, desperately looking for another route. But everywhere he turned, more and more bucketheads were encroaching upon them. They were trapped, pushed into a corner like an animal being hunted, like a mouse in a trap.

 _No._ “No, no, no,” He breathed, his heart racing.

No, he was supposed to be rescuing Jyn, not getting them both caught! Maybe she even had a better chance without him. She had been imprisoned, but not killed. And now they were both about to die. It was pointless. This entire rescue had been pointless.

He was forced to think fast as the troopers caught up with him. _There are alternatives to fighting,_ he remembered old Ben telling him.

With a heavy heart, he knew what he had to do. He had to give Jyn a fighting chance.

Cassian stepped forward, slowly raising his hands into the air. “I surrender,” he announced, with all the confidence he could muster.


	9. Survival

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In order to escape the Death Star alive, Jyn and Cassian must take desperate action in order to survive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has commented, left feedback/constructive criticism & kudos, you guys are the best and most supportive people ever! <3

The troopers surrounded them, drowning him and Jyn in a swarm of shiny white armour. They lowered their blasters, and he let out a sigh of relief in the moment knowing that they were not immediately going to be killed.

This was the Empire though, and obviously they wouldn’t let him off unscathed.

He groaned as he was kicked in the back of the shin, falling and landing on his knees with a sickening _crunch._ He saw Jyn fall to the ground next to him, the blaster clattering down beside her. One of the troopers carelessly kicked it at away, and it went spinning across the floor, far out of their reach.

“There’s no escape this time, rebel scum,” The trooper snarled through his helmet as they were hauled to their feet. He heard two quiet _clicks_ as both of them had their hands bound behind their backs.

He waited, ready for them to move him away and throw him in a cell like they had with Jyn, or just take him away and put a blaster bolt through his head. They could kill him if they wanted to, but he wouldn’t let them do the same to Jyn. He would fight back with everything he had left to save her; he didn’t care if it would cost him his life. That was how he had ended up in this mess, was it not?

However, they didn’t move them. Instead, they appeared to be parting down the middle…like someone was coming. Someone important enough for all the troopers to move aside and stand to attention. He saw someone, a tall, thin man in an officer’s uniform, and even from this distance he could clearly make out his wrinkled face, which was stretched tightly across his gaunt cheeks.

Cassian knew who this man was. He was (or at least he had been) a rebel intelligence captain, of course. This was Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin himself, governor of the outer rim territories and one of the most important members of the imperial elite.

Slowly, he walked towards them, his hands clasped behind his back. His smile was sickly sweet, and Cassian wanted nothing more than to punch him square in the face, to break his long, hooked nose.

“Miss Erso. I didn’t expect to be seeing you again,” He declared, walking past him and addressing Jyn directly. “Causing trouble as always, I see.”

He couldn’t quite see the two, they were just on the edge of his peripheral vision. But he didn’t have to be seeing them to know what was happening. Tarkin was close to Jyn, too close, towering over her small figure.

And he knew that Jyn’s heart was beating faster, that her breathing was getting more and more shallow. He knew that she would be trying to pull away, trying to get away from Tarkin and the Stormtroopers and to find some corner where she would be able to curl up and hide. Terrified, damaged Jyn.

He craned his head around for a better view. Tarkin stood there over Jyn, with a long bony hand on her chin, twisting her head up to face him. Cassian felt furious that that man would lay his hands on her. Furious, he tried to swallow down the bile rising in his throat.

“You won’t win!” He shouted at the old man, struggling against his captors to turn around and look him right in the eye.

In reply, Tarkin chuckled. It felt sharp as a knife, it sent a chill down his spine. It was so empty, so analytical, so clinical.

“And who might you be?” He questioned. “A fighter, by the looks of you,” He said, as he turned around and walked towards Cassian instead. Thankfully, he let go of Jyn, letting her head drop as she slumped towards the ground, held only by the firm grasp of the trooper who had restrained her.

“Have you come to rescue our dear Jyn?” He asked, leaning in close and analysing him. “How quaint. How… _sweet.”_

Cassian thought about struggling against his bindings, wanting to get to Tarkin, to attack him, to knock him to the ground, punch him in the jaw, make him bleed… _blast,_ even just spitting on him would feel good. But the bucketheads were larger and stronger than he was, he was by far outnumbered, and he was restrained. Instead he stood still, coolly. He stretched his back out, attempting to look as composed and intimidating as he possibly could in his position.

“You won’t hurt her,” He demanded, his eyes meeting the Grand Moff’s.

“Won’t I?” Tarkin inquired. “And who are you to order about a Grand Moff?” He raised a brow, stepping closer towards him. He seemed to be studying his face, trying to find an answer to his question within it.

“Joreth Sward,” Cassian answered, lying easily and naturally. Although part of him questioned why he had felt the need to lie at all – after all, he was probably going to be dead soon anyway.

“Well, _Joreth Sward,”_ Tarkin replied. “If that is even your real name. I think you will find that I can; and I will, do as I please.”

He shot a quick glance at one of the troopers, who swiftly delivered a hard kick to Jyn’s side, eliciting a scream from her as she doubled over from the pain. Tarkin’s face twisted in a strange way as Cassian shouted out helplessly.

“You can kill me. I don’t care. But don’t hurt Jyn! Don’t you dare hurt Jyn!” He pleaded desperately, yelling at Tarkin, who was at that point so close to his face.

“Oh, we will kill you,” He promised, once again smiling. He leant back, turning around to address his troopers. “Take miss Erso back to her cell. Double security,” he ordered, receiving curt nods in reply.

“And dispose of the intruder.”

**\--**

Jyn was crouched over, the only thing separating her and falling to the floor was the tight, painful grip of her captor holding her upright by her arms. And from that position, with a half-conscious mind inside a head that was hanging towards the ground, it took too long for the words to process.

“Dispose of the intruder,” Tarkin had demanded.

 _No,_ yelled a voice inside Jyn. _No!_

The world around her spun; blurs of white moved past her as the troopers began to disperse, keeping their grasp on her as the started to walk away, dragging her with them, feet just grazing the ground as she tried to step forward, the side of her body still screaming out in pain…

Screams. All of a sudden there was screaming and shouting, kicking and yelling; like a feral child. It didn’t register to Jyn that the sounds were coming from her. It seemed to her like it was coming from all around, engulfing her.

Then it all clicked.

“No!” Jyn screeched. “No, nonono!”

They were taking her away. As soon as she had gotten out, as soon as she had been rescued from the dark, blank, maddening walls of her tiny cell she was being taken back. There she would have to wait out the hours before her scheduled termination…a prisoner of the Empire and of her own mind.

_Dispose of the intruder._

No…no, they were going to take Cassian away. They were going to kill him. In her final hours it would be hanging over her head. Maybe then she would be wishing for death, thankful as she faced the firing squad of tall white-clad Stormtroopers with blank, expressionless faces…

No. Jyn wasn’t ready to die yet. Her cell door had hissed open and she had been given a second chance, a second chance with Cassian. She could struggle, she could writhe in the grasp of the trooper holding her, or she could fight.

Inhaling sharply, she bit back her screams. Her eyes closed, and in the darkness she planned the moments ahead.

Jyn wasn’t big, she wasn’t strong. She didn’t have heavy defensive armour or a rapid-fire blaster. But she knew how to fight. She knew how to use her small size, her agility to best her opponent. Her years as Saw Gerrera’s protégé had taught her well. She didn’t have the weapons that rarely left her side, she didn’t have her truncheons.

However, Jyn had herself, and that had always been enough for her. Her eyes snapped open, she breathed out.

She hissed, clenching her arms tight and twisted around, her arms still in the grasp of the trooper. She focused her weight down, planting her feet firmly on the ground. And then, with all her strength, she whipped her arms, bound behind her back, up, hitting her captor in the sensitive spot just underneath his chin.

He stumbled back, becoming vulnerable for just a moment. Before any of the other Stormtroopers could react, she kicked out, lashing out very deliberately at the weak spot behind his knees that made his legs wobble. As she had expected, a window of opportunity had just opened up for her. She brought a knee to just below his hips, an area not covered by the impenetrable white armour that covered _nearly_ all of his body. Her knee connected with his skin and bone; landing with a satisfying _crunch._

Now with the upper hand, she reached for his shoulder, which was roughly level with her head. Even though he was much heavier than her, she easily brought him down over her own shoulder. She uttered a silent prayer of thanks as he clattered to the ground beneath her.

All in the space of a blink of an eye.

Jyn planted a foot on top of him, pinning him to the floor. Out of the corner of her eye she was alerted to the other troopers running towards her, only just becoming aware that she was fighting back, and winning. She reached down, ripping the blaster of the fallen trooper out of his arms with ease.

It was awkward to hold, with her wrists bound, but not impossible. With one hand she wrapped her fingers around the trigger. She flinched and squeezed it as she pointed it down between her hands, and she gasped as a red-hot laser bolt burned through the cuffs, stinging her hands. With her wrists now free, she handled the blaster like an extension of her own arm.

Lightening quick, she spun around rising back to her full height as she blindly shot out blasts in the direction of the approaching troopers. All around her they dropped, like insects on a hot, dry day. Only bigger, and armed with blasters. She ducked as their returning shots ricocheted off the walls.

“Seize her!” Tarkin commanded, his voice still high-and-mighty, articulate and demanding, but shaken. The twinge of fear in his tone made Jyn feel a tiny bit of twisted pleasure somewhere in the back of her mind.

More ran towards her, but she blasted them down before they could get a single shot in. _For the Empire’s best and brightest,_ a snarky voice inside of Jyn quipped, _they are kriffing bad shots._ If she was still the Jyn Erso she was before the torture, maybe a small smirk would have escaped her lips.

Beneath her, the trooper she had beaten hand-to-hand was still squirming under her boot. She was ready to lean down, to hold his own blaster to his helmeted head, and squeeze the trigger. However, something was stopping her. _Someone._

 _“Let him go Star-Dust. He’s unarmed. If you kill him now you are no better than they are,”_ Papa whispered to her softly. Time seemed to freeze, and Jyn closed her eyes, nodding.

 _Thank you Papa,_ Jyn relied silently.

She pulled away and released her foot. He scrambled away, crawling from her in retreat. She tried to collect herself as the combat lulled, the remaining forces drawing back in order to protect their Grand Moff. She was surrounded by the bodies of the troopers she had cut down, all around her in a morbid kind of circle. Her breathing was heavy as she kept her blaster raised, daring them all to come for her.

Mere steps away from her, a squad of three troopers were still holding Cassian. She turned around, readying her blaster once again to shoot them down. But she couldn’t make the shot. They were holding him in front of them, using him as a human shield knowing that she wouldn’t have the guts to blast them.

It was at that moment that she realised he was staring at her, eyes wide and mouth open in shock. It was at that moment that she realised something had snapped inside her, that she realised that she had been ready to cut a helpless man down in cold blood, that she realised she only stopped because the thought of her father had intervened.

Her heart raced, adrenaline rushing through her veins as she breathed heavily, frozen in position with her stolen blaster hanging in the air. She stepped forward, placing one foot in front of the other, walking up the corridor. She held the weapon out, daring the troopers to shoot at her as she moved forward.

She walked past Cassian and the troopers that held him. She felt his disbelieving eyes burn into her as she turned her back on him. Slowly, with all the confidence she had in her, she kept moving, until she reached Tarkin, flanked by the remaining troopers. They raised their weapons as she came closer. Surprisingly however, Tarkin waved his arm, commanding his guards to lower their weapons.

Jyn stopped, so close to his face that she could study every single fine line in his face. She looked up, staring into him, her green eyes cold and sharp as daggers.

“Don’t you dare move,” Jyn murmured, the cold end of the blaster pressing into Tarkin’s skull.

“I’m…listening,” Tarkin said calmly.

“If any of you make a move, I shoot!” Jyn shouted at the troopers. Those that hadn’t already dropped their arms, moving back.

“I’ll let you go,” She said quietly. “But you have to do as I say or I will not hesitate to put one of these blasts right into your head.”

“You will let us go. You will tell your men to stand down. You will tell your men not to follow us. And then you will pray we never cross paths again. Because if we do, I will kill you.” Jyn continued. “Am I making myself clear, Grand Moff Tarkin?” She asked softly, almost calmly.

He nodded slowly and stiffly in reply. “Yes or no!” She demanded.

“Yes, Miss Erso,” Tarkin responded. “Stand down!” He ordered his troopers. “Do as she says.”

Jyn stepped back slowly, carefully. She kept her blaster raised, but pulled it away from Tarkin’s head. She held still, staying in her threatening position, while she waited for them to carry out her orders.

The men holding Cassian pushed him forward, letting go of his arms. He stumbled forward, nearly falling to his knees as he struggled to regain his balance.

“Remove his restraints!” Jyn demanded, pointing her blaster their way. One stepped forward, punching the code into the cuffs to release them. His arms fell to his side and he stepped forward, using his now-free arms to steady himself.

Shakily, Jyn reached her free hand towards Cassian. He took it, wrapping his around hers. Their eyes connected, both staring into each other as words went unsaid between them.

 _Why? How?_ He seemed to be asking. She swallowed back the lump in her throat and pulled back.

“Don’t you dare follow!” She shouted at Tarkin, who was standing behind her, visibly shaken, and to his troopers, who were unarmed, their weapons thrown to the ground beneath their feet.

She turned and began to walk, Cassian with her. After a few slow steps she broke into a run, sprinting down the corridor back the way they came, turning a corner towards the entrance to the detention block. She didn’t look behind her, but kept her eyes peeled straight ahead, her blaster still primed and ready to attack.

And back at the scene a trooper turned to Tarkin. “Sir,” He asked through his helmet. “Should we go after them?”

“No,” Tarkin replied simply, running his hands over his olive-green uniform, straightening out the creases.

“They won’t get far.”

\--

Of course Cassian had to leave behind the helmet he had dropped in Jyn’s cell. It would have been so much easier, a guard with a prisoner, making his way towards an interrogation room, or transferring her to somewhere…he could’ve made up a lie on the spot. Lying came easy to good spies, and Cassian had been a very good spy.

Infiltrating an imperial base, in disguise, to break out rebels…it felt like old times. Only this was the Death Star, he was a defector, and the rebel, well, was _Jyn._

That moment, while on the run, hiding from an entire space station’s worth of imperials, wasn’t a good time to unpack the feelings he had towards Jyn. But blast, he did it anyway.

Captain Cassian Andor had always prided himself on being a good soldier. Everything he did, he did for the rebellion, for the cause.

He didn’t let himself feel emotion, didn’t let himself think in anything but black and white. When he did things he regretted, when he killed, or let be killed, innocent people for the sake of the rebellion, he buried anything he felt beneath his belief that the rebel alliance was inherently good.

He remembered what Chirrut Imwe had said to him, when they had been captured by Saw Gerrera’s rebels on Jedha. That he was in a prison of his own making.

Then came Jyn Erso. Wild, selfish, unpredictable Jyn Erso. A woman who thought for herself, who followed her own morals, not those of the cause. Except she hadn’t been selfish. No. She had put herself in danger to save a child, she had been ready to die to complete her father’s mission.

And then on Eadu, when he had been unable to pull the trigger on Galen Erso, it wasn’t just because he saw Jyn’s face in his, but because deep down he knew that it was wrong. That the alliance was wrong to want him dead. Later, Jyn’s words had burned into him. _You’re no better than a Stormtrooper._ It had stung because it was true.

The Cassian Andor before Jyn Erso would have thought him mad for leaving the rebellion. But now he knew that it had been the right thing to do. Sometimes, the most good could be done by disobeying orders. Jedha, Eadu, Scarif, and now the Death Star. He had been ready to leave the detention block, to run away from the reinforcements. If he did, Jyn would have died.

But now something had changed in Jyn. The light in her eyes was gone. She had been angry before, she had killed before, but what she had done in the detention block…it almost seemed to him as if she wasn’t even aware of what she was doing.

“Cassian?”

He was drawn out of his thoughts and back to reality by a barely-audible whisper, so close to his ear that he could feel hot breath against the skin of his neck.

“Cassian?”

Jyn. Of course. The two of them were hiding in the corner of a quiet corridor, watching carefully for patrols of Stormtroopers as he tried to find his way back to the hangar. Someone or something had jammed the frequency of his commlink; he had no way of contacting the others.

“I think we should move,” she said quietly, reaching an arm out to point at the intersection in the corridor. “Didn’t you see the patrol just move past? They might loop back around and then they’ll find us.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, almost silently. “Time to go.”

Slowly, looking around to make sure they were unseen from every possible angle, he stood up, Jyn standing with him. She clutched her stolen blaster tight, and he felt naked without one. Hopefully he wouldn’t need one, as he planned on making it back to the hangar without encountering any trouble. They had kept a low profile on their way back from the detention block, and he figured that they were getting close now.

They were slow as they walked along the empty corridor, keeping to the walls and being careful where they placed their feet.

The passage came to a mouth, exiting into a larger space. He saw a glimpse of the dark galaxy, dotted with distance stars. Ships. Not just any ship. The Falcon!

He began to walk quicker, roughly estimating the number of personnel in the hangar. Most were technicians, unarmed, not dangerous. However, there still was a good-sized amount of troopers, focused around the _Millennium Falcon._

“Halt!”

Troopers. In front of him, blocking his path. More, running from the side to further barricade him. No. Escape, freedom, hope was so close. It was _literally_ steps away from his reach. They had to make it. They had to.

Without realising, his hand had reached for Jyn’s, and hers, naturally, to his. He searched for her, intertwining their fingers, lacing them together painfully slowly.

Her hands were warm. They were small, but by no means dainty. There was nothing about Jyn that was _dainty._ He could feel the scars and callouses which adorned her skin, and he figured that she could also feel his. Both of them, Jyn and Cassian, had been forged in war. Each mark told a different story. And, it suddenly dawned upon him, he wanted to know those stories. He wanted to know the rough, raised bumps which sat against her skin –

Now was not the time.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted them. The others and the princess, running towards the ship. Old Ben wasn’t with them. Cassian prayed that even if he had been caught, or worse, he had managed to disable the tractor beam before meeting whatever fate had befallen him.

He saw the princess stop, in the middle of the hangar, looking their way, a blaster tucked under her arm and aimed at the troopers surrounding them.

“Jyn!” She screeched, letting out a volley of blasts their way, as the two rebels ducked down to shield themselves from the fire. “Quick! Run!”

With their hands still connected, they both broke into a sprint. Neither of them needed to be told twice, and they dashed madly towards the ship as they felt the surviving troopers hot on their heels. _So close, So close._

Shots rang out behind him. They were shooting at them, missing, shooting again. He didn’t stop. They didn’t stop. If they did, if they returned fire, they would most likely have lost their window of escape, they would be surrounded, and this time killed on the spot. There had spent all their chances.

Behind him, he heard the sickening sizzle of laser connecting with skin.

Jyn screamed out in pain and Cassian spun around just in time to see her begin to fall. He reached out, catching her small figure in his arms. _No._

_No._

The fabric of her pants leg was burning and smoking as he saw the flesh underneath burnt by the blast that had hit her. She gasped for air, stumbling into his arms as she lost the support of her legs beneath her.

Jyn Erso fell into his arms, and he was the only thing standing in between her and the cold hard ground. It felt as if she was burning against him, and he could feel her shallow, laboured breathing as she moaned in pain.

Her leg. On Scarif, he had been shot in the shoulder, and then fell maker-knows-how levels down, crashing against durasteel grating that had instantly fractured most of his ribs. He had survived. And Jyn was a fighter, a survivor, more so than him. _Blast!_ She wouldn’t let herself die there, he knew that. He also knew that _he_ wouldn’t let _her_ die there. Her eyes, glazed over, dilated and disconnected from the pain, briefly connected with his.

“ _No,_ it’s okay. That’s it. _That’s it Jyn, that’s it,”_ he breathed, desperately trying to keep her with him. They had come this far. They had come this far _together._ It wasn’t fair.

Cassian wasn’t so much saying the words for her as he was for himself. It was selfish, he knew. Jyn seemed to respond, whimpering through her groans of pain as her body began to shiver.

He became aware of the precious seconds being wasted as the held the small woman. Her hand, which had still been locked into his, became limp, slipping out of his clammy fingers and falling to her side.

Tears, anger clouded his vision. For Cassian, the passage of time warped, slowed, stopped altogether. Possessed by strength he didn’t know existed within him, he lifted Jyn, dragging her along with him as he sprinted towards the boarding ramp, trailing after Solo, Chewbacca, Luke and Leia Organa.

 _Force,_ he prayed silently. _Force, save Jyn. Please save Jyn._

He had barely made it onboard as he heard the blast door slamming closed behind him, and the engines begin to prime.

But he didn’t pay attention to anything that happened after that, because the floor seemed to rise up, smacking him hard in the face. Or maybe he had fallen toward the ground, collapsed. But nothing was clear, as Cassian Andor collapsed and his vision faded to black.


	10. En Route

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the lack of updates, I hadn't really found the motivation to write but then over the weekend I FINALLY got my hands on the novelization (!!!!) and now I'm freshly shook. So expect more updates from here on out :))

Luckily, Cassian wasn’t out cold for long. Maybe a few seconds, or a minute, he wasn’t entirely sure. But when he came to, the floor swimming underneath him as he struggled to his feet, the frantic humming and shaking of the Falcon’s engine told him that they had gotten away, that the old freighter was working its hardest to get as far as it could away from the Empire’s precious superweapon.

Eventually, he drew himself to his feet. He looked around, seeing that he was still in the spot where he had collapsed; just beyond the boarding ramp with the airlock closed tightly shut behind him. Beneath him, Jyn was still crumpled on the cold durasteel ground.

His balance was shaky, his eyes blurred. In front of him, the garish light beams which lined the corridors were blindingly bright, making him squint as he stared forward. Through the light, he saw movement, coming his way. Flowing, swishing, dirty, off-white fabric running his way.

“So you’re alive,” Leia Organa stated matter-of-factly as she reached him. She seemed impatient as she looked at him while he stared back.

“Jyn…” He began, but he was cut off.

“Yes, Yes, I know!” She shouted, stepping past him and leaning down, attempting to help the unresponsive woman up. “Help me!” She shouted at him, gesturing at him, telling him to get down and to help Jyn up.

He stood for a moment, on the spot, like a complete idiot, before it clicked to him. _Down. Help Jyn,_ his mind demanded him, and he dropped. He wrapped his arms around her unconscious body, using all his strength to drag her upright, draping her over his shoulder so he could move with her somewhat un-awkwardly.

“Get her to a bed,” Leia ordered, grabbing Jyn’s arm and steadying her.

He half-ran, half-walked down the corridor of the _Falcon,_ making his way towards the crew quarters, towards the only tiny bunks on board the old freighter. Jyn was shaken around as she moved, letting out a small, intelligible groan.

Eventually, he reached the door which led to the crew quarters. As quickly as he could, he punched the release button and the door opened _painfully_ slowly. There small room held several bunks and storage. Without thinking, Cassian let go of Jyn and ran towards the compartments and cupboards, hoping that somewhere in there were medical supplies.

 Jyn stumbled behind him, held up only by Leia, who was much smaller than he was and had to adjust to take Jyn’s weight on top of hers.

“Where on this piece of junk are your _kriffing_ med supplies?” He demanded, blindly reaching for the compartments on the walls, pulling them out and throwing them to the floor in anger and desperation. _Hydro Spanners? Sonic Wrenches?_ “None of this I can use!” He yelled, as the tools fell to the floor.

“Oh stop it laser-brain!” Leia snapped from behind him. The princess was even smaller than Jyn, and she struggled under her weight as she tried to drag her unconscious body onto one of the thin mattresses.

 _Come on,_ he pleaded silently, as he tossed aside useless supplies and equipment, desperately searching for anything, for a surgical kit, bacta patches, synthflesh, _anything._

And then, right in the corner, neglected behind a stack of old holo-zines, he found something. He gripped the package tightly, pulling it out. In his hand was a meagre amount of bacta patches; untouched and dusty, probably long past their use-by-date. But it was better than nothing.

He ran back towards Jyn, who was lying flat on the bottom bunk. Lowering himself to his knees, he leant over her, tearing the fabric of her pants leg up to her knee, where the blaster had struck her. Freeing her skin, he was able to inspect it. Cassian was no medic, but he had enough field experience to know how to assess damage, and then how to treat it using standard-issue equipment, like the patches he held in his shaking hand.

And luckily, thankfully, he saw that the wound wasn’t that deep. The blast looked like it had nearly just grazed her leg as opposed to hit it perfectly. _Thank god the bucketheads are such kriffing lousy shots,_ he said to himself. However, the wound still needed to be treated. Quickly, he tore open the packaging of the patch with his teeth, releasing the wet, sticky substance from the plastic. He placed the slippery, slimy stuff over Jyn’s wound, holding it in place with his hand.

“Here,” Leia said, handing him a strip of white fabric that she had torn from her dress. Too frantic to form words, he simply nodded in thanks, taking the strip from her. With his wobbling hands, he wrapped the fabric around Jyn’s leg as a makeshift bandage, tying it once it had made about two rounds. Relieved, he let his hands go, the bacta now held in place. Hopefully, _hopefully_ it would work.

He leant back and exhaled, realising that he had forgotten to breathe. And then Cassian closed his eyes, hoping, praying, pleading that she would be okay. That Jyn would be okay.

\--

She was on a hill. Above her, the sky was grey and overcast, with beams of sunlight breaking through the clouds and hitting the ground and the blue-grey rolling ocean in the distance. She earth beneath her was dark, soft black soil with tall green grasses growing out from beneath. As she walked, she ran her fingers through the blades, which felt cold and wet to her touch.

From the top of the hill, she could see down to the lowlands beneath her, on the edge of the black-sand beach. There was a homestead down below, with white rendered walls and a pale domed roof. Out from the homestead were several outdated vaporators. She squinted, looking out for droids or men servicing the machines, but the place was abandoned. Around her, there was no noise, not even the sound of the wind, her heartbeat or her breath. There was pure silence.

She stepped forward, her feet sloshing through the muddy ground. It felt sticky and freezing between her toes, and she looked down to release she was barefoot. In fact, all she seemed to be wearing was a simple grey shift which hung down to just below her knees. She reached her hands to her face, then her hair, feeling her shoulder-length locks braided tightly and neatly against her head.

She kept walking forward, one step after the other, downhill. Slowly she came to realise that for in the first time for as long as her memory stretched back, she was completely free of pain. For years, she had either been covered in cuts or bruisers or worse, ranging from blast wounds to concussions, broken bones, stab wounds, everything. But now, there were no burning, bright, stinging wounds, no dull, throbbing pains. It felt almost elating, as if she was floating as she walked.

“Jyn,” Came a gentle, lilting voice from behind her. She turned around to see a woman, slightly taller than her, with her green eyes and medium-length messy brown hair, dressed in a long, thick, brown coat with the hint of a beige tunic with a red sash underneath. She was smiling, not just with her mouth but with her eyes, and it made her feel safe, comforted, peaceful, it felt like nostalgia and childhood memories and warmth.

Jyn opened her mouth, trying her very best to form words that refused to come. After a moment, she closed her eyes, inhaling deeply and exhaling. The face, the eyes, the feeling she brought.

“Mama,” She breathed, taking a step towards the woman. She still looked young. Jyn gathered that now she wouldn’t actually be all that younger than Lyra Erso as she appeared to her now. Of course, she had never had a chance to grow old. The Empire had taken that from her, the Empire had taken Mama from Jyn.

Her walk increased to a run as she tried to get closer to the smiling woman, her feet squelching through the mud as she jogged, then sprinted towards her mother. “Mama!” She shouted out.

“Jyn,” Mama repeated, her tone and inflection exactly the same as she had sounded when she had uttered her daughter’s given name before.

However, the closer she got to where her mother was standing, her hair and coat waving with the grass in a breeze that Jyn hadn’t even noticed was there, the further away she seemed to be, higher and higher up the slope of the hill. “Mama!” Jyn called out again as she began to puff, taking heavy breaths and keeping her arms and legs pumping quickly as she tried to reach her mother.

“Mama!” Jyn cried out, frustrated and panicked and upset when she released that she wasn’t going to reach the woman who was drifting away from her, even though she didn’t appear to be moving at all.

“Trust in the force, my Jyn,” She told her in a whisper, but Jyn could hear her more clearly than if she had raised her voice. “Trust in the force, my Jyn.”

“Mama!” Jyn screamed, drawing to a halt in the dark mud, panting and exhausted. “Mama!”

“Jyn,” Lyra said, as she disappeared behind the peak of the hill, fading away into the grey blue sky, her voice along with her.

_Jyn…_

_Jyn…_

“Jyn!”

Jyn Erso was startled awake by a low, rough voice somewhere close to her. Her eyes fluttered open, and her immediate reaction was a pained groan as a wave of agony washed over her, her leg burning the hardest, and the rest of her muscles and bones throbbing with a constant, dull ache.

She looked around, realising that she was no longer on the grassy cold hill, but on a hardly-cushioned bunk in a small dark room, the machine humming and _whooshing_ sounds around her alerting her to the fact that she was on board a ship. And judging by the state of the shabby, outdated machinery, the scratched durasteel floors, and the flickering light, she was on no Imperial craft.

But then the memories came flooding over her all at once. Running, a blaster in hand, bodies around her, forced to the ground, kicked in the side, blaster pressed against the head of a cold, tall man, her hand linked with another’s, a flash of intense pain through her leg as she fell to the cold hard ground.

“Jyn?” Came the voice again.

Her eyes flicked to her side, and there, crouching on the ground next to her, leaning overhead, was dark hair, brown eyes, tanned skin, short, messy scruff. She felt herself smile. “Cassian,” She whispered.

He was no longer in the trooper armour, he had changed into his loose, off-white shirt and his worn brown jacket. He had brushed his hair out of his face and she looked at it, glinting slightly in the low, flickering light.

“You were shaking,” He observed, concerned. She hadn’t noticed. It must have been in her sleep.

“I was dreaming,” She replied, the vision of the hill and her mother still vivid in her mind. “I…I think I was home. Mama was there.” Her voice was coarse and gravely, and when she attempted to talk it came out at a volume so low she wasn’t entirely sure that Cassian had heard her. The words felt like sand in her throat.

“Do you dream about them often?” He asked. “Your parents?”

She immediately opened her mouth to say _no,_ until she remembered talking to her father in her cell on the Death Star…although that had not felt like a dream. It felt like she could reach out, talk to him, as if he had really been there. Those had been the first dreams she had had about her parents since she was very young, when the pain of their loss and the terror of being alone in the galaxy had still been fresh and painful in her mind. After that, she had rarely even _slept_ enough to have dreams, let alone dreams about her parents.

However, she didn’t have enough words to express that in an answer. So instead, she just looked at him and answered simply: “Sometimes.”

“Was it a nightmare?” He inquired, seemingly worried.

“…No,” She replied, but in all honestly she wasn’t entirely sure. It hadn’t felt like a _happy_ dream; in fact, it had almost felt like Mama was trying to _warn_ her about something. “She said my name, then she said for me to _trust in the force._ ”

“Why would she tell you that?” He asked. He raised his brow, intrigued.

Jyn wasn’t really sure if she should have told him the answer, but she did. “That was the last thing she said to me before she died,” She said slowly. “ _Trust in the force._ ”

Cassian obviously wasn’t expecting the answer, and his quizzical expression fell, and he looked mournful, shocked, sorry. “Oh,” He said eventually, simply.

Jyn looked away, staring at the ceiling. She felt her eyes closing once again, she was still exhausted. Sometimes, when she was on the run, she would go for days without sleep. Forever on the move, fuelled by adrenaline and caf. And when she had gotten a brief moment to sleep, it was rarely in an actual bed. Usually it was on street corners, or old, hard cantina benches. The bunk on which she lay, even though to most would be small and uncomfortable, was a luxury to her. The perfect place to just close her eyes and sleep _forever,_ given how tired she seemed to be.

“You’re going to be okay,” He told her gently, and for a moment she wasn’t sure what exactly he was alluding to. Going to be okay? Had something happened?

Blast of light. Falling to the floor. Sharp pain still shooting through her leg.

Jyn winced as she tried to sit up, her leg stinging as she moved. “Ah,” she groaned involuntarily, giving up. She stayed where she was, lying on the thing mattress. Cassian reached out, his hand cupping Jyn’s jaw gently, then lightly brushing against her cheek. He gave her a comforting smile, but his eyes gave him away. Inside, she could see that he was sad.

“How did you know?” She asked, quiet and airy as the only volume she could manage was that of a whisper.

“Huh?” Was Cassian’s reply. He looked at her quizzically, confused, unsure of what exactly she was talking about, thinking maybe she was still delirious.

“How did you know how to find me?” She questioned. “How did _they_ know how to find me?”

“They?” He repeated, unsure.

“ _The rebellion,_ Cassian,” Jyn replied, slightly exasperated. What kind of _intelligence_ agent was clueless as to what _they_ meant? To think that _she_ was the one with the broken mind –

“- It…wasn’t the rebellion,” He admitted slowly, but not before interrupting her train of thought.

“What do you mean?” She said, confused.

“I…I’m…I’m not with the rebellion anymore,” He admitted, swallowing sharply.

She was taken aback. Surely he didn’t mean he had _left? Defected?_ She had thought that Cassian Andor had devoted his entire life to the cause. And he would leave, just like that?

“What?” Jyn asked in disbelief.                        

“I ran. I left,” He told her, a wave of guilt washing over him. Jyn studied his face, his lips pressed together, his brow furrowed.

“Why?” Jyn demanded, and even though her voice was soft and breathy and tired, she sounded intimidating, and he gulped.

“I thought I was the only one who lived. They told me I was the only survivor they found,” He began, his voice cracking as he spoke. “I…something had changed. I couldn’t stay.”

“So you ran?” Jyn questioned. “You told me that _everything_ you did; you did for the cause.” She was shocked, she felt like she didn’t really know him at all now. _He_ was the one who had convinced _her_ to stay, even when she could have walked away once they had given her back her freedom.

“I…” Cassian muttered, trailing off. He wanted to defend himself, to give her a valid reason for why he had left. He wanted to tell her that he had left in the hope that _somehow, someday,_ he would see Jyn Erso again. But he said nothing, his mouth falling open as he looked away.

“I’m going back,” Jyn said softly. I’m going back and I’m going to stay. I’m going to fight. _You_ convinced me of that.” She reached out with her weak arm, tired and shaking, and pulled Cassian’s head up so his eyes faced hers.

“Cassian?” She asked, wondering if he was still with her.

“I don’t want to lose you again,” He whispered to her. His face looked as if pain had shot through him, all twisted with lips pressed together and eyes downcast.

“Then don’t,” Jyn argued, even though her voice was gentle. “Don’t lose me. Stay with me. But I’m not going to change my mind, Cassian. I’ve made my choice.”

She saw the metaphorical gears churning inside Cassian’s head. What was he thinking? Did he actually want to go back? Surely, after all, he had been in the fight since he was six years old. It was all he had ever known, it was what he placed his faith and hope in. Did he think that they would even let him back without consequences? Surely. It was the alliance, not the empire. And they needed all the soldiers they had. Did he want her to put herself in danger? Was he scared that she would get hurt again?

 _Too bad,_ she said to herself. _I don’t need him to look after me._

 _But I do need him,_ she added.

She was tired. No, _drained._ She still felt as if she was in a dream, her mind almost felt weightless, like she was floating above herself and looking down.

“Jyn…I don’t want you to leave,” He said softly, letting down his guard and exposing his inner vulnerability and desperation.

“Come with me then,” She told him. “ _Stay_ with _me,_ Cassian. Come back to the alliance. I look in your eyes…and I don’t see those of a man who wants to run. You still want to fight. You still _can_ fight.” She was sincere, and convincing. In response, Cassian bit down on his bottom lip.

“Please, Cass,” She pleaded, her eyes connected with his. She hadn’t called him _Cass_ before. However, it felt right; in her mouth, in the way it rolled off her tongue.

He didn’t say anything, but she could see his face changing. It was softening, and he could see in his eyes that he was thinking, contemplating.

And then she was mad. If she had energy, she would be up, screaming at him and throwing things everywhere. However, that wasn’t the case, and she lay there pathetically on the bunk, seething silently.

“They tried everything to get information out of me, did you know that?” She began, trying to raise her voice at him, but failing quite miserably. “They _tortured_ me Cassian. And they were ready to _execute_ me once they realised they weren’t getting anything useful out of me. And you know what? I had _every_ opportunity to tell them where the base was, and _I didn’t. I didn’t_ because _you_ had taught me that I need to start caring about things other than myself.”

Cassian looked taken aback, shocked and guilty. “Tell me what changed,” She begged.

“I lo- …You, you…” He tried to say, but he stumbled over his words. He looked like he wanted to make an excuse, but he didn’t have the heart to. Instead, he sat silently, letting himself feel the guilt and shame of what he had done.

“What?” Jyn demanded hoarsely.

He took her hand, clasping it in hers as she fumed. She looked up at him, and saw tears welling in his eyes. They seemed so big on his face, like glowing brown orbs.

She wanted to argue more; she wanted to yell and scream and beg him to take back the decision he had made until he forfeited and promised to stay with her. However, she could already feel her head become heavy against the thin, firm bunk, her eyes threatening to betray her and fall shut.

Cassian continued to keep his mouth shut tight, and it became clear to her that he wasn’t going to talk.

So she let out a small groan, adjusting herself on the mattress in order to shift into a more comfortable position. She pulled her eyes away from him, choosing instead to stare up at the bland, off-white ceiling and plastisteel piping that ran across it. It was stained, and she imagined that up close it probably smelled terrible. However, then, the only smell was that of bodies. Hers obviously wasn’t good. She hadn’t seen a refresher for a _long_ time, which the layer of grime that covered her skin and her clothes screamed out. Jyn had grown so used to it that she didn’t even notice it.

She wasn’t entirely sure if it was minutes or hours that she lay there in silence, staring up as her body slowly began to sleep, waiting for Cassian to answer her, unsure if she really wanted him to or not. She thought about going back to Yavin, if he would stay, or if he would leave her alone, lost and overwhelmed and shattered to pieces from what the Empire had done to her in the interrogation chamber.

Eventually, she surrendered herself to her tiredness, and the room began to swim around her. Any other time, the pain in her leg would have prevented it, but now she could hardly even cling on to consciousness. Her eyes fell closed lightly, and her head went limp and leaned over to the side. Jyn finally let herself sleep.


	11. Homecoming

Cassian sat on an uncomfortable chair next to a gurney in the medical ward of Base One. On the gurney, Jyn lay unconscious, in a white med-gown on a thin white mattress. She had been there for an hour or two now, after she had been lifted from the bacta tank that had addressed the worst of her injuries.

Their arrival on Yavin Four had been chaotic, frantic. He had practically _screamed_ at the rebels who came to meet the ship as it arrived that Jyn needed medical attention, and urgently. He had rushed her down to the med ward. _She’s lucky._ They told him. _Good thing you had medical supplies on board, otherwise she may have been permanently damaged. Go. We’ll take things from here._

But he had refused to leave her. Even when they had placed her in the tank, he kept his hands on the plastiglass, as if he could reach through and take her hand in his own. He had stayed like that, even as they told him to _stay out of the way, let us handle this._

Now, everything was still and silent. A thin privacy screen had been drawn around them, and it was just him and Jyn.

Well, until he heard the thudding footsteps of booted feet running towards him.

“Andor!” He heard an excited shout from behind him. Cassian jumped, standing up from the small, uncomfortable chair in the corner of the med ward. He turned around, and then came a flurry of blurry black curls and orange flight jumpsuit and-

“-oof” He groaned as all the air was pushed out of his lungs. Shara Bey grabbed him, pulling him into a tight hug. She laughed, and although he could see her face with her head on his shoulder – he knew that she was smiling her trademark ear-to-ear grin.

After a moment, she pulled back, her tight black ringlets bouncing over her face, covering her eyes. With a calloused hand, he swept the curls out of her face and tucked them behind her ear. However, they almost immediately sprung free.

“So, I knew you’d come running back here,” She said, brushing her hands on her loose orange trousers, then shoving them casually into her pockets. She leaned back on her heels as she studied Cassian’s expression.

“Didn’t really have much of a choice,” He replied gruffly.

“Aw, I guess you just can’t get enough of me, can’t you Andor?” Shara teased jokingly. In response, he let out a small breath of laughter through his nose, with his lips pressed tightly together.

“I guess command knows I’m back on base too, then,” He said, growing tense. Alliance topside was nothing like the Empire, but surely they weren’t going to take a defector being back on their hidden base very lightly.

“Yeah,” Shara admitted, her face falling. He saw her swallow and bite down on her bottom lip. “They’re looking for you. It’d be better for you if you find them first.”

He knew that she was right. He had come back after deserting. And Jyn had convinced him to stay this time. If he had any hope of being let back in, let alone regaining his old rank, he had to get down on his knees and beg, to eat his humble pie, to present his case as well as he could to the generals. He knew that the best way to do that would be by seeking them out on his own accord. But he slowly shook his head. “Jyn would want me here when she wakes up,” He mentioned quietly, altering his tone in attempt to downplay how important it was to him. But Shara saw right through him. She knew him far too well.

Around people he cared about, Cassian was actually a terrible liar.

“I know,” She murmured, her face softening. She reached out with her hand, taking Cassian’s forearm and giving it a comforting squeeze.

“But you still have to go.”

Cassian pressed his lips together. He didn’t want to admit that Shara was right, he really didn’t. But slowly, unsurely, he nodded, looking down at his scuffed old boots against the cold med ward floor.

“Go,” She told him. “Go now and I’ll stay with Jyn. And I’ll comm if anything happens, and once you’re done licking the boots of the generals you can come right back.”

“…Okay,” He replied simply. His face blank and empty.

\--

Light. Light shining into her eyes, too bright. Like she was floating up, she was weightless. The light shone into her eyes and a high-pitched ringing pounded her ears.

Last time she had woken up it was dark, cold, with machine humming and shaking. Now she was still, it was bright, and the air was thick, heavy and humid. The more she came to, the more she took in around her. White walls, white ceiling, in the corner of what seemed like a larger room, but separated by privacy screens.

Suddenly, a wave of panic washed over her. She was alone. Why was she alone? When she came to before she wasn’t alone. Where was she now?

“Cassian?” She whispered. When she didn’t get a response, she panicked, jerking upwards. With her quick movement she apparently upset several of the monitors she was connected to, setting off a string of angry _beeps_.

“Cassian?” She said again, much louder and desperate this time. She scanned her eyes around the room, empty and white. “Cassian?”

_Where was he?_

She saw movement behind the privacy screen, a silhouette of a figure rising to its feet and moving, walking down and around and into her little corner of the larger white room.

“Cassian?”

But it wasn’t Cassian. It was a woman, a woman she didn’t recognise, with messy dark hair pulled lazily to the back of her head, with a few curly strands loose and framing the golden skin of her angular face. She was dressed in a loud orange jumpsuit that was slightly baggy, but Jyn could see her curvaceous body underneath in the way that the suit cinched in at the waist.

“Hey,” The woman said, sitting down on the small chair next to her gurney. “It’s Jyn, isn’t it?” She asked. She held a small cup in her hand, steam rising from the liquid inside.

Jyn nodded, leaning against the wall in an upright position.

“My name is Shara,” She told her, smiling warmly and comfortingly as her dark ringlets fell over her tanned face. She handed the cup to Jyn, who took it, wrapping her small hands around it and taking in its warmth. “Caf, from the mess. It’s not that great…but it’s hot and gives you a buzz, and that’s all that really matters, right?”

In reply, Jyn offered a weak grin, and held the cup to her lips. The scalding hot caf flooded her mouth, burning her tongue. Shara was right, it wasn’t very good. It tasted vaguely chemically, with a strangely sour aftertaste. But Jyn had had worse, and the energy that the caf brought was welcome. She was still _exhausted._

“Thanks,” She muttered through gulps. The hot drink was slowly waking Jyn up, making her more alert and her mind more focused.

“You’re in the medical ward. On Yavin. I hear they fixed up your leg pretty good. How are you feeling?” She questioned.

“Like a bantha trampled me,” Jyn groaned, her leg and her hip throbbing with a strong pain, and her entire body aching dully. Shara let out a loud laugh, low, breathy and genuine. Her seemingly true happiness was rubbing off on Jyn, making her feel warmer inside, and not from the caf. She decided that she liked Shara.

“I crashed my A-wing once, felt like that for a while,” She replied. Turing her head slightly, she pulled at the collar of her orange jumpsuit, hitching it down so it showed her tanned neck and collarbone. A thin, pale pink scar trailed across her skin, raised and bumpy. “Piece of glass, got this as a souvenir. Taught me not to be a kriffing idiot on take-off.” Shara explained. Jyn winced at the sight of it, and saw Shara sit back as she realised that it had not been the best thing to say to her at that moment.

“Ah. Sorry,” She apologised.

Jyn brushed it off. “It’s no problem,” she muttered. “So, you’re a pilot?”

“mmhmm,” Shara answered. “Lieutenant Shara Bey, Green Squadron.”

That made her think of Bodhi, of the shy defector in the baggy grey flight suit with imperial insignia. The one that he had refused to swap for rebellion colours in order to remind himself of where he had come from, and the choice he had made to fight for the other side, to fight for what was right. And now he was gone, just more specks of dust amongst what had once been Scarif and the Citadel. She swallowed down the lump that was rising in her throat with another sip of the hot caf.

“Where is Cassian?” Jyn asked, attempting (and failing) to hide the worry in her voice.

“Grovelling,” Shara said. “To the generals. Apparently you convinced him that it is worth staying after all.”

“I…” Jyn trailed off. Part of her wanted to offer a snarky reply, one that would make the other woman laugh the way she had just before, but she couldn’t think of one. “I…I don’t know why he keeps disobeying orders for me,” Was what she ended up offering.

“I think you do know,” Shara replied. “And you should feel special,” She added, teasing good-naturedly. “Not many have gotten underneath the stormy exterior of Captain Cassian Andor!”

“…I don’t think that’s what things are like between us,” Jyn said weakly. Although, that wasn’t to say that she _wished_ that it was. However, Jyn honestly did not know how to feel about anything, let alone the enigma that was Cassian.

Shara didn’t respond, but smiled knowingly, rolling her eyes just a little. They fell into a silence, which felt natural, not awkward and tense as silences so often were. For once, Jyn didn’t feel threatened by the presence of this stranger.

 _Is this what having friends is like?_ She asked herself. It had been so long since she had had anything she could compare to friendship, not since she had left Saw’s cadre. There had been Staven, who she had joked with and who had given her her first taste of fermented bantha milk (which tasted somehow even worse that she had anticipated. But she quickly came to realise that people didn’t drink the stuff for its _taste._ ) There had been Codo, who she had pushed away after rejecting his advances. There had been Maia, pretty, kind Maia, who died in her arms.

She opened her mouth to speak, not entirely sure of what, but the urge had come to her. Her lips parted, maybe ready to question again about Cassian, or to learn more about Shara – but she was cut off

Because All of a sudden, from everywhere at once, from every single loudspeaker in the medical ward and also faintly from the hallways and corridors of the base outside, came a blaring klaxon boom, and lights began flashing red.

“I have to go!” Shara said urgently, pushing out of her chair and standing up, the seat beneath her groaning as it slid across the cold floor beneath it.

“Why? What’s going on?” Jyn demanded, jerking forward, panicking. She didn’t realise at the time that she was shaking, beginning to sweat.

“I don’t know…” Shara began, but she was cut off as the alarm seemingly began to blare out even louder. “As long as I’ve been on base, we’ve never had this alert before.”

“What does it mean?” Jyn blurted out, becoming more and more anxious and afraid as the alarm continued to sound. She heard heavy botted footsteps and urgent shouts as people ran down the halls outside. _Maybe it was just a drill,_ she told herself, but it did nothing to calm herself down. She knew that it wasn’t true.

“Full scale attack,” Shara said, almost silently.

**\--**

“Captain Andor,” General Davits Draven, Alliance Intelligence, enunciated clinically. There was little difference between the battle-hardened rebellion leader and a protocol droid, the way he hid the tone in his voice.

Cassian stood before him, back straight and hands clasped behind him in order to make himself appear as professional as possible, and _not_ like someone who had run away from his post barely a week beforehand. In front of him was General Draven and the other alliance leaders, however, Mon Mothma and Bail Organa were notably absent. Mothma, as the Alliance head of state, often had commitments which took her off-world frequently, and Organa… Cassian could only hope that the man’s death had been quick, painless. The aftermath of the destruction of Alderaan was still fresh in his mind.

Draven scowled, death-glaring him. “If I was the one in charge you would be court-marshalled. If this was the Empire you would be promptly executed. I hope you understand the gravity of this situation.” He growled.

“I understand, sir.” Cassian answered, quietly yet firmly. He kept his chin up, meeting Draven’s stare.

General Syndulla stepped forward, her lekku draped over her chest. Still a pilot at heart, her flight goggles were pushed up and rested atop her head. Her eyes were much kinder, but her thin brows still knitted together as she studied him. She had a reputation of being too soft, but Cassian knew that wasn’t the case. She was a kind and motherly woman, but she always put the cause first.

“I believe that Captain Andor in fact acted in the best interest of the alliance. He may have disobeyed orders, but he did the very same when he retrieved the Death Star plans with Erso from the Scarif Citadel. Now we have those plans, and the princess, back with us. Things that may not have happened if Andor did not desert when he did.” She said, ignoring Cassian and instead addressing Draven. The balding general looked reluctant, but he answered her with a curt nod.

“I must admit,” General Dodonna began, “That the circumstances that brought you back to Yavin are…extraordinary. And it appears that you were instrumental in the rescue of Princess Organa, and that shouldn’t be ignored.” His eyes narrowed, grey brows furrowing and the wrinkles on his forehead deepened. He seemed to be analysing Cassian, deciding whether or not he deserved the old man’s respect.

“We lost a lot of good people on Scarif,” Draven said. “And all-out war with the Empire now seems inevitable. We’re willing to overlook this incident, Andor, but let me make this very clear: you are on thin ice.”

“Thank you sir,” Cassian replied gratefully. He stood to attention, saluting all three generals before turning on his heel and walking out of the dimly-lit war room. And as he did, that was when the lights turned red and the alarms began to scream.

Cassian didn’t need to be told what was going on. He knew what this signal meant. And he knew that the Empire was seeking revenge. And somehow, they had found the location of the base.

There was nothing he could do to help this time. He had no ship, and he was no fighter pilot anyway. As people frantically filled the halls around him, running to the hangar as the call to scramble yelled out from the loudspeakers. He ran in the opposite direction, deeper into the base and towards the medical ward.

Maybe Cassian was ready to die that day. But he was not ready to die alone.

**Three Days Later.**

Jyn had hardly crossed the threshold of her assigned room before her emotions finally hit her like a cargo shuttle.

Outside, the entire base was still in the midst of celebration. She couldn’t walk past anyone without them reaching out to her, most not even knowing who she was, clapping on her back and yelling things like “Long live the resistance!” and “The Empire’s time is up!” They yelled and whooped in groups with bottles of Corellian brandy in their other hands.

It wasn’t that Jyn was _unhappy_ at the victory. Of course she wasn’t. She was elated, astonished that their tiny organisation of allied rebel cells could deal such a massive blow against the Imperial regime. And she felt an immense sense of both pride and relief at the thought of the Death Star, her father’s development which had hung over her head and haunted her for a lifetime, had been blown out of the sky. Maybe now, now that her father’s invention was gone and _he_ had been the one to plant the seed of its downfall, she could feel proud to be named Erso.

In a way, the victory was strange, anticlimactic. With no way to get out, she had ended up slipping back into unconsciousness while the alarms blared all around her. She hadn’t even seen the station hanging ominously over them, blocking out the light of the sun as she had seen it to on Jedha and Scarif. And now it was gone.

When she had woken up, the alarms had long since fallen silent. Instead, the grating screaming sound had been replaced by laughing and cheering and the sounds of _humanity_ muffled by the walls that separated the med ward from the rest of the galaxy. And when she had woken up, Cassian was there, by her side, his hand gripping her own.

They waited together for her to be discharged. Her body was healed, the angry blaster wound on her leg reduced to a pale scar. Even though she was pain-free, the medic, a twi’lek woman who she had learnt was named Sholludi, took Cassian aside and spoke to him in a hushed worried voice. She obviously thought that Jyn couldn’t hear her, but she caught snippets of the conversation.

_The physical damage is healed, but imperial torture doesn’t leave external injuries. But it injures the mind._

She pretended that she heard nothing, deciding not to bring the subject up as she was finally let out of her bed, as she finally worked up the strength to actually get up. Her clothes had been washed, and after a brief clean in the ‘fresher, where she blasted chilly water over her body, trying to scrub off the dirt and the sweat and the memory of her cell, she put them on, feeling clean for the first time in what felt like years.

Walking outside, she kept her head down, not really prepared mentally, emotionally or physically for the excitement, exhilaration and pure unadulterated joy of the celebrations raging outside. So Cassian, who had walked with her towards her assigned private quarters with her, placing a hand on her shoulder for comfort, steered her away from the crowds, taking her straight to the peace and quiet of her new room.

She stepped inside, and the small and simple room gave her a warm feeling in the pit of her stomach. It wasn’t much, just a bunk and a bare desk with a simple, hard, plastisteel chair, with a door in the corner that she presumed led to an equally tiny and plain refresher. It wasn’t much.

But for the first time since she had been torn away from her quiet childhood home on the farm on Lah’mu, she had a pace to call home. It wasn’t much, just a bare room with minimal furniture, but it was hers. She would make it hers.

 _Welcome home,_ she said to herself.

She was here, she was home. She the Alliance to Restore the Republic, and so, so much more importantly, she had Cassian Andor.

Because, from the bottom of her heart, she was sure that he was going to stick around.

Before she could stop herself, there were tears. They had first welled up in Jyn’s green eyes, and were now rolling down her pale, freckled cheeks, hot, wet and salty. Her eyes stung. She pressed her lips together tightly, biting down on her bottom lip in an attempt to hold back the sobs rising in her throat. The corners of her mouth twitched up slightly in a small smile; half sad, mournful, overwhelmed, and half contented, peaceful.

She sat on the edge of the bunk in the small, cramped, shabby quarters and looked deeply into his kind brown eyes. Cassian sat close next to her. He had been smiling before, but now he looked worried, concerned.

“Are you alright?” He asked softly, placing a hand on her arm. She nodded.

With his eyes like that, she realised she wanted him to smile again. On the rare occasion he smiled his whole face lit up, and small lines appeared near the corner of his eyes. _He doesn’t smile nearly enough,_ she decided.

“I’m fine,” She reassured him. “I’m good, I really am. I’m just…it’s a lot to take in right now.” Slowly, she leaned in closer to him, letting her head rest gently against his shoulder. She breathed in deeply, slowly, feeling his warmth through the thick fabric of his jacket.

“Do you want to talk about it?” He asked, leaning in closer to her as well. For a moment, she didn’t respond. Instead, she looked down at the ground, stifling a sob and kicking her feet against the legs of the bunk.

“I thought I was going to die there Cassian,” She burst out, letting herself cry into him as she talked. “They were going to kill me! I was going to die in that awful dark room-”

That was when she let everything spill out from inside of her. Everything she had pent up, she let out. She buried her face into the warmth and safety of his arm and -

“- Shh, it’s okay now,” He whispered. Gently, Cassian wrapped his arms around her, holding her close against him as sobbed. It was warm, it was comforting. She felt safe, secure. She felt at home in his arms.

Part of her wanted to stop time and hold this moment forever. Sure, she was wracked with emotions that felt as if they were twisting, stabbing into her like a thousand tiny knives. The mostly-healed blaster wound in her leg still dully throbbed with pain.

But that moment, with Cassian’s arms around her and Jyn pressed against his chest, it all felt so _right._ For so long she had been alone, refusing to let anyone behind the wall she had built around her inner self. Finally, letting that guard down, she felt so _open,_ so _free._ The two of them sat there, not talking because so many words were going unsaid between them, for minutes, but to Jyn it felt like an eternity.

“Thank you,” Jyn whispered, looking up. “Thank you for saving me.”

“You saved my life a couple of times in there too, you know,” He replied, half joking, half serious.

“I saved your life like twice before,” She quipped. “I think you can stop being all humble and own this one.”

“Oh can I?” He asked her.

“Yeah,” Jyn said softly, more real this time. “You can.”

She turned her face back towards his chest, slowly leaning in even further. All she wanted was to engulf herself in his warmth, inhale his earthy, homely smell that was so comforting. She held herself there for a second; breathing him in.

“Jyn…” Cassian breathed, taking her face in his hand and cupping her jaw, pulling her up to face him. Their eyes were level, green eyes staring deeply into brown. And then, he leaned in closer to her, the space between them so small that she could feel his breath against her skin.

Slowly, gently, light as a feather, Cassian brushed his lips softly against her own.

It felt like a sharp bolt of electricity had coursed through her mouth and towards her brain. He pressed his lips against her, more firmly this time, and it was warm and safe and comforting and all things _good_.

She wanted to reciprocate, she wanted to draw his lips in closer, she wanted to kiss him back with desperation, with urgency. She wanted to cup her hands over his face and run her fingers over the rough, messy stubble on his jaw. She wanted _him_ to run his hands through her hair, wanted _him_ to move down, leaving a trail of soft kisses down her jawline and her neck, leaving the faint trace of his warm, comforting breath in his wake.

She wanted…she wanted _him._ She wanted Cassian.

But she couldn’t. With tears still welling in her eyes, she pulled away, turning her head towards the corner of the bunk so she didn’t have to look at Cassian’s happy, sad, hopeful, defeated, rough, beautiful face.

“I…I’m sorry,” Cassian began, inadvertently widening the rift Jyn had just created between them. “I shouldn’t…I shouldn’t have done _that._ ”

Jyn slowly shook her head, and leaned back against him. However, she stopped once she was once again leaning against his arm, although it felt like they were farther apart than ever before. “No,” She whispered, swallowing back a tiny sob. “No…I’m sorry. I can’t. I’m sorry that I can’t.”

“Don’t say that,” He murmured to her. “Don’t say that, Jyn. I really shouldn’t have tried to do that. It wasn’t…it wasn’t right.”

Jyn still wasn’t able to meet his deep brown eyes. She kept her head down, as if the bare, thin plainly coloured blanket covering the bunk on which they both sat was covered in some kind of eye-catching intricate pattern or was of some interesting texture.

She stifled the tears that were still threatening to spill from within her. Jyn wanted to kick herself. Why couldn’t she stop _kriffing_ crying all the time. Ever since the Death Star, every single one of her waking moments had been accompanied by an endless stream of sobs and hot salty tears that irritated her eyes until they were red and puffy. She had never been a crier, until now. Part of herself wanted to know: _what had changed?_ However, she was able to answer her own question all to easily.

_Everything had changed._

“Cassian…I,” She started, but trailed off and was unable to finish. Blast, she didn’t even know what she was _going_ to say. The silence that had engulfed the two was so infuriatingly deafening, she had so badly wanted to break it. But now things seemed just as, if not even more, awkward.

“I should go,” Cassian told her gently yet gruffly an unsure, pulling himself away. “The medic said you need rest, um, a lot of it. I need to go and you need to sleep.”

Jyn _was_ tired. Even though she had barely moved at all in the past day or so, she still felt as if all the energy had been sapped out of her. And he was right, although he was only using it as a convenient excuse to get away from her. Doctor Sholludi had ordered that she stay on bed rest _indefinitely._

Cassian stood, shoving his hands into the pockets of his well-worn brown jacket, ready to turn and walk out the door of the small living quarters; ready to leave Jyn. He was on the threshold, in the doorway, when she murmured out to him. She was quiet, but he could still hear her clearly in the secluded, cosy little space.

“Cassian,” She began, and as she said his name she saw his face twist a little underneath the emotionless façade he had hidden behind in order to protect himself. “Cassian…I can’t. Not yet. But when I can, when I can…I want it to be with you.” As soon as she finished she bit down heavily on her lip, suddenly worried that she had said the wrong thing.

“When you are ready, Jyn,” He replied, his low voice barely above a whisper and free of any inflection. With that, he turned away, walking out of her room, the door hissing shut behind him.

He didn’t look at her when he left. She really, _really_ badly wished that he had.

Now, with the quarters suddenly so cold and dark and lonely, she let herself fall onto the thin yet soft mattress, curling herself into fetal position and baling her fists which she pounded into the pillow. She then felt her tears flow freely, and they rolled down her face silently, no energy or resolve left to really sob or cry.

She was exhausted, and she truly did want to sleep, but her mind didn’t let her. Over and over again, like a broken holo, she kept replaying the feel of Cassian’s lips as they brushed against her, the feeling of his hot breath on her skin as he held himself so close to her, the heart-wrenching feeling of pulling herself away. Then her mind made her think of a vague promise of _more,_ maybe one day, when Jyn wasn’t such a mess and was actually, finally, sure of herself and what she wanted.

With the feeling of lips barely touching her skin and the feeling of hot tears leaking down her face and onto the pillow, she balled her hands into fists, sitting up and beating said pillow angrily beneath her. The only sound that she could manage was a choked, strangled sob. Silence surrounded her as the darkness of her room refused to reply.


	12. Stars

No one had specifically told her that she was to be on bed rest indefinitely; it was more something that Jyn had imposed upon herself over the last few days. By then, it had been about a week since the Death Star had been blown out of the sky, and the mood on base was still one of elation. A mood she _really_ hadn’t been in the mood for. Honestly, all she wanted to do was sleep.

She’d been outside twice over the last few days. The first, briefly, dashing down to the mess hall to stock up on supplies. Namely the ration bars that mostly went untouched by the other soldiers of the rebellion whenever there was better food on offer. But She tolerated them. The dry bars were far, far better than whatever was in the nutrient paste they fed her in imperial prisons. The second, she was briefed in the war room, standing awkwardly in front of the rebellion leaders as she only half-processed what they were saying to her.

_After recovery…a valued member…Sergeant Erso._

It was with a pang that she remembered that she had first been given the rank of sergeant by Sefla, one of the men who had gone with her to Scarif and had not returned, following her because she had made them believe that there was still hope in the galaxy, even if that mean sacrificing his own life for it.

And so, when she returned to her room, laden with the guilt of survival all over again, she drew her blinds, turned off the lights, and crawled under the standard-issue blankets and tried her very best to sleep. Because she didn’t feel so terrible when she slept.

However, minutes or hours or days later, she didn’t know, her datapad; something she had ‘borrowed’ from alliance command (although it clearly hadn’t been in use, lying amongst other supplies and wiped blank) flickered to life, its screen illuminated and casting a blue-ish glow over her dark, quiet room. Annoyed by the rude awakening, she groaned, rolling over and reaching blindly for the slim piece of technology that was blinking impatiently somewhere on the edge of her bunk. Her fingers grasped at the thin sheets, scratchy blanket, and finally she found what she was looking for when they wrapped around the cool plastoid shell of the tablet.

She adjusted herself, hauling herself up against her pillows so she was sitting, and brought the screen to her face. She winced, her eyes stinging as they adjusted to the light shining straight into her face.

 _Incoming message,_ she read. _Sender: Lt. Bey. Subject: Drinks?_

Jyn shook her head a bit, smiling. She had already been asleep, but the clock onscreen told her that it was barely past evening, that the night was still young.

She punched in the passcode she had set and opened the message.

_Hey Jyn,_

_Celebration’s finally dying down on base, plus you need to get out and about. Come have a drink with me in the mess? We have Corellian brandy and sabacc!!_

_-Shara_

Shara’s overuse of punctuation made her let out a small laugh. She imagined her asking her in person, as excited as she sounded through the message. She fiddled with a few buttons on the pad, pulling up the holo-keyboard in order to send a reply.

 _Outgoing message._ The screen said. _Sender: Sgt. Erso. Recipient: Lt. Bey. Re: Drinks?_

_Sure, see you in ten._

_-Jyn_

She sighed, kicking off her blankets and swinging her legs over the side of her bed, bare feet gingerly connecting with the cold surface of the floor. She stood, stretching up, lifting her arms above her head and flexing them out. She heard the joints in her elbows pop with a satisfying _click._

Although it was hot and humid on Yavin, she felt a slight chill without her blankets. She was dressed in nothing but her undergarments and a few-sizes-too-large shirt which she had been rationed upon her discharge from the medical ward, along with another pair of trousers and boots. She preferred the ones that she had already, especially now that they had been washed clean. However, the loose shirt was comfortable for sleeping.

She shuffled around the room, darkened by the blinds being pulled shut so she could rest. She ran her hands across the walls until she found the switch, flicking it on. The bulb on the ceiling hummed, turning on and illuminating the room.

She pulled her trousers over her legs, tucking her loose, crinkled sleep shirt into the pair and cinching them at her waist with a belt. Electing not to change into a cleaner, better fitted top, she pulled her worn vest over the top, making herself feel slightly more put together. Finally, she slipped her comfortable boots over her cold feet, and she immediately felt the blood flow back into her toes.

After pulling her messy hair back into a bun at the base of her neck, with her short strands hanging loosely around her face as they always did, she pressed the button on the side of the doorframe, and the door itself shuddered open, and she stepped out into the quiet hallway outside. Shara had been right, the celebrations were now mostly over, with only a couple of people milling around the corridors, most sitting quietly as they nursed a hangover.

Briskly, she walked along, thankful that nobody attempted to talk to her whenever she crossed past someone. It wasn’t far to the mess hall, only a few minutes down a couple of warren-like passageways and corridors.

When she arrived, the large space was mostly empty, apart from a few stragglers left over from dinner, sitting at tables in the corner. The meal must have been a few hours or so ago, earlier in the evening. The murmur of voices in the hall was low, as people sat amongst close-knit groups drinking and talking quietly.

“Hey! Jyn!” She heard a friendly voice call out. She followed the sound, and saw Shara, leaning back in a chair, her feet propped up on the table. For once, she wasn’t in the orange flight suit that she seemed to constantly wear, and was instead dressed much more casually in a white shirt with a khaki-green jacket over the top. She was with two other men, neither of whom Jyn recognised. One, with his arm around Shara in a more-than-friendly way, her leaning back into him. The other, sitting on the other side of the table, held his sabacc hand close to his chest, laughing at a joke that Jyn hadn’t heard.

She pulled a chair from a nearby empty table, dragging it across the ground until she reached Shara and the others. “Hi,” She replied, coming out quieter than she had anticipated. No one seemed to mind her awkward greeting, however, so she sat down at the table with them. Immediately, the smaller man started to deal her a set of cards, while Shara passed her the bottle of Corellian. Gratefully, she took a swig, and it burned slightly as it spread across her tongue and down her throat. Looking down, she glanced at the hand she had been dealt. It had been a long time since she had played, and she was never very good at it anyway. Luckily, this was just a fun game amongst friends, and she wasn’t called upon to wager anything, as if she had anything to bet.

“This is Kes and Wedge,” Shara said, introducing the two men. “And this is Jyn,” She continued, introducing her to them.

“You know how to play?” Wedge, who had dealt her the cards, asked.

“Yeah, I’m a bit rusty I guess,” Jyn replied, her eyes downcast at her hand, which she held close to her chest.

He made the first move, slamming a set of cards down onto the table and leaning back, grinning. “Perfect twenty-three!” He declared. “Looks like I win another bottle of Corellian!” In response, Kes groaned, throwing his cards down on the table in frustration.

“My hand was bantha shit,” He lamented, taking a sip of the brandy as Wedge continued to gloat.

“Not so fast,” Shara said, looking up with a wicked smile. She slowly fanned her cards out, laying them down on the table. “Idiots array!”

“ _What?”_

Shara started to laugh, as Wedge’s gloating grin was wiped right off. “Your face! You look like you just saw the Emperor!” She giggled. “Tough luck Antilles. Looks like I win tonight!”

They continued like that, argumentative banter over who actually won, while Jyn stayed silent. She felt out of place, like she was intruding on these friends just having a fun night together.

“Looks like we have a shadow,” One of them said, she wasn’t quite sure who. She looked up and saw Kes gesturing to something behind her.

Curiosity piqued, she turned. Jyn hadn’t seen, let alone talked, to Cassian since the incident in her room days ago. And when she saw him standing there, leaning against the wall with his arms folded against his chest in the same way he had done when she first saw him, the first time she had stepped foot into the war room of Base One seemingly a lifetime ago, she felt a swell of emotions rise from the pit of her stomach. Part of her wanted to go and slap him across that infuriatingly beautiful face of his.

And then he looked up, and their eyes connected for a fleeting moment. He had seen her, she had seen him, and now _he_ knew that _she_ knew that _he_ was watching _her_. Jyn broke the stare, turning back towards the table and reaching for the brandy. In a few quick gulps, she downed what was left of the bottle and slammed it down harder than she had anticipated on the table, causing it to shake.

“Be right back,” She mumbled to Shara, Kes, and Wedge, pushing her chair back and wincing at the argumentative groaning noise it let out as it moved.

It wasn’t far to where Cassian was standing, just to the side of the room, and there was hardly anyone left in the hall by that time; yet she felt like a hundred stares were burning into her as she walked over. Maybe it was his stare that felt like a hundred.

She drew to a halt in front of him, and he leant off the wall and stood, nearly a head taller than she was. “Am I interrupting?” He asked, his mouth drawn in a thin line.

“Not at all,” Was Jyn’s reply, in an attempt to sound nonchalant, not caring, but the little break in her voice betrayed her. Irritated at herself, she bit down on the inside of her cheek as he looked at her.

“How’s your leg? Cassian inquired.

“Fine. Why?” She responded.

“I was hoping we could take a walk,” He explained.

“I can walk fine,” She said, not bothering to mask the fact that she was slightly offended that he was treating her as if she was broken. _I’m not broken._

“Can you climb?” He asked, as if he had a list, where he was ticking off everything she could and couldn’t do. Had the doctor put him up to this?

“I wasn’t planning on doing any _climbing_ tonight,” She answered. “What, is that what you guys do for fun around here?”

The tension between the two of them was palpable, Jyn felt as if she could cut through it with a knife. The _thing_ that had happened in her room those few days ago still hung over them, and now neither of them seemed to want to get any closer to the other.

“Maybe,” Was his response, cracking a small half-smile. However, Jyn could see that it wasn’t particularly genuine. Because whenever Cassian smiled, he did it with his eyes, with the little lines that formed around them on his face. Although, his smiles were rare. She had observed that fact before, that she wished that he would smile more.

“Yes,” She said.

“Yes?” He echoed, unsure of what she meant.

“Yes to _I was hoping we could take a walk,_ laser brain,” Jyn sighed, cracking her own smile, and, much to her chagrin, hers was quite real.

Cassian led the way, and they walked slowly, out of the mess and into the zig-zagging corridors outside, heading further out until she began to feel the air change; to where it was more fresh, more bracing against her skin. She realised that she had not truly had time to feel fresh air on her for the latter part of a month, ever since Scarif.

Eventually, they reached the entrance to the old temple in which the base was located, walking out and into the humid night air. She hadn’t bothered to ask Cassian where exactly they were going, and she didn’t really care. It wasn’t as if there was anywhere she actually _wanted_ to be.

“Do you know who built the temple?” He asked her, finally breaking their silence as they walked slowly along the loose path outside.

“No,” She admitted. If her parents had ever even taught her anything about galactic history in all of their stories, she had definitely forgotten it by now. And an old ruin on an until-now uninhabited moon was far more obscure than any of the knowledge she did have about history.

“People say it was built by an ancient race called the Massassi, around five thousand years ago. The Massassi were enslaved by the sith, and what was once a proud species eventually went extinct. And now we only have their architecture to remind us of them,” He said, like he was weaving together a story.

“How do you know that?” She asked him, but the only reply she got was a shrug. “You know, we won’t let that happen to us,” She contemplated, looking up at the temple with towered above them.

Now he was confused. “What?” He asked.

“This rebellion,” She explained. “We won’t let it fizzle out, or be wiped out by the Empire. We won’t leave the wreckages of our ships and our guns on deserted planets as the only reminders that we were ever here, that we ever had _hope._ ”

“I think it’s beautiful,” Cassian said, stopping in his tracks so he could properly look at the towering structure, seemingly stretching up towards the red gas giant of Yavin. Of course, it was nowhere near as tall as the skyscrapers on Coruscant had been growing up, but with nothing to compare it to it was hard to believe that there was anywhere more soaring in all the galaxy. “I think it’s inspiring that even though they’re gone, this has endured, that it’s a monument to the fact that they were _here._ ”

“I guess I can see how you think like that,” Jyn replied, although she hadn’t pegged Cassian as an optimist.

“You just don’t think like me because you haven’t seen the view from the top,” Cassian said coyly, gesturing towards the peak of the structure. It was a long way up, but the stepped design of the pyramid made the climb possible.

“Is this what you brought me out here for?” She asked him.

“…Possibly.”

He extended an arm out towards her as they both took towards the first rocky step of the pyramid. “Are you sure you want to go? Is your leg up for it?” He questioned, concerned.

“I guess it’ll just have to be,” She told him, smiling. “You’re such an _enabler,_ Cassian!”

As she took her first step up, she placed a hand on Cassian’s good shoulder for support, pressing her weight against him, limping slightly on her bad leg. She was careful to leave his other shoulder, as judging by the state of her leg it wasn’t strong enough to be holding anybody up. Blaster wounds, she had decided, were objectively _the worst._  

“Are you okay?” He asked, looking back at her with concern in his voice.

“I’m fine,” Jyn brushed off, puffing slightly from the exertion. She was determined not to let her kriffing leg stop her.

“Are you sure? We don’t have to go the whole way if you don’t want-” Cassian began, but Jyn cut him off.

“Cassian, I’m fine,” She told him. And then she cracked another half-smile. “Besides, I need the exercise.” He returned her smile, letting out a laugh as the tension briefly dissipated between the two. Then, he extended an arm out towards her, and gripped her hand as he helped her pull herself up yet another crumbling step.

As they climbed, she didn’t look down, knowing that doing so would give her a wave of vertigo and she would immediately start to panic, her heart would beat fast and she would work up a nervous sweat. But she was too stubborn to admit that heights weren’t her strong point.

Eventually, they reached the top, and a cold breeze blew gently across her face, tousling her hair. She still had her arm wrapped around Cassian, and in her mind she was brought back to both stood together, holding each other, at the very top of the citadel. Hoping, _praying_ that somebody out there was listening for their transmission.

There however, on top of the old ziggurat, everything was so much more peaceful. Forest stretched out all the way to the horizon, and the night sky twinkled with a thousand stars. The moon wast cast with a faint red glow from the gas giant of Yavin which took over a large portion of the sky. Up there, the only noise was the slow wind and the faint sound of animals out in the wilderness.

She inadvertently sighed as she lowered herself to the ground, sitting down and stretching her legs out, leaning back and taking in the light of the stars. Slowly, she closed her eyes, and she heard Cassian sitting down next to her.

“I’m sorry for the other day,” Cassian said softly, as Jyn opened her eyes and moved to look at him. He was tense, his shoulders hunched up. He seemed to be trying to shrink into himself. Jyn reached out, gingerly placing her hand on his arm.

“It’s okay,” She replied gently. “I like you Cassian. A lot.”

“I didn’t really think I was a likeable person,” He muttered.

“You know how I said, right before we went to Scarif, that I’m not used to people sticking around when things go bad?” She asked.

“Yeah.”

“Well, I meant it,” She continued. “I was eight years old and I lost Mama and Papa. I was a teenager and Saw abandoned me. And I was bitter and hated the Empire and the rebellion and everyone and myself. Which is why I like you, because you stayed with me. Because you are still staying.” A little voice inside her groaned. _You sound like a stupid girl with a crush,_ it mocked her. But Jyn didn’t really care. She was sitting on top of the world.

 “Draven’s sending me off-world,” He blurted out.

With that, she came tumbling back to the ground.

“What?”

“He’s sending me off world.”

Jyn couldn’t help but shake her head, exasperated. “I heard what you said Cassian. But What? Why?”

“He’s punishing me for what I did,” He tried to explain. “I brought this upon myself-”

But she wasn’t about to let _General Davits Draven, Alliance Intelligence,_ take this moment from the two of them.

“Cass,” Jyn interrupted, her voice barely above a whisper. “If you have to go…”

“Jyn, I…I have to go.”

“I was trying to say…If you have to go…then I have to kiss you _now_.”

He leaned in first, closing the distance between the two of them as he reached out, cupping her jaw with his hand as she moved in closer to meet him halfway. When their lips met, slowly and gently brushing against each other, it was just as light and feather soft as it had been the last time. Except this time, she wasn’t caught off guard and she both _wanted_ and _was ready_ to kiss him back.

So, she deepened the kiss, pressing her lips harder against his as she shifted so that she was positioned on her side, facing him. She wrapped an arm around his neck as he began to run his fingers through her hair, loosening the tight bun she had fixed it into before. They went slowly, exploring each other’s mouths as if they had all the time in the world just to be together.

Cassian let out a quiet, low noise from his throat, his hand splayed on the back of her scalp. She moved her hand, running her fingers along the curve of his jaw and through his scruff. Then, his lips left hers, and he began to leave a trail of light, fluttering kisses along her jaw and then down her neck. All she could do was let out a strangled little _gasp._

Eventually, her hand still on his jaw, she pulled him back up to her lips, needing him to be there. She slowly let her hand roam, over the sensitive area below the jaw and down, the skin fluttering beneath her in response. His hands moved from her hair and back to her face, once again cupping her jaw as they both kissed deeply, slowly.

Already, Jyn was thinking about when the moment would end. Because it had to end, Cassian was leaving, and she would go back to her dark room until they let her into the field herself. But as they sat there, both of them illuminated by the light from the galaxy, she wanted to freeze that moment in place, to hold it with her so it would never end. She wanted that moment to last forever, Jyn and Cassian, together under the light of a thousand stars.


End file.
